Journey to the Past
by CrazyCabernet
Summary: R still can't remember his old life, but he doesn't really mind. He's happy with his new one. He's happy with Julie and that the world is making its way towards recovery. Dreams, he thinks, make up for the lack of memories. Then Raelyn shows up. Is she really his sister? Will she take him back into his past? "At least when I was Dead, I didn't have to worry about things like this."
1. Chapter 1

**AN: Okay, so my brother and I read the book on our Kindles a few weeks ago and loved it, and we went to see the movie with my mom yesterday when it came out, and OMG, IT WAS SO ADORABLE! Who else has seen it so far, what did you think, was R's run not UBER adorable?! His arms flopping around kind of reminded me of a little kid, it was so cute! And OMG, I STILL CAN'T GET OVER THE FACT THAT PERRY WAS PLAYED BY THE GUY WHO VOICED ZUKO IN ATLA! And Julie looked kind of like a blonde Kristin Stewart in the face, and the Nicholas Hoult, in that last scene, I realized suddenly that he was like Logan Lerman combined with the dude who played Luke in the PJO movie! His face was like Luke's, but then the dark hair and stuff was Logan, OMG!**

**ANYWAY, I kind of combined the book and the movie in this, so R and Julie's eyes aren't gold in this like they are at the end of the book, which I did because Nicholas Hoult has absolutely BEAUTIFUL blue eyes, and I just couldn't bear to take those away! Besides, Edward Cullen and his family have gold eyes, so it would be a little weird for me writing the gold eyes and not having it be them, so...yeah. **

**Anyway, I hope you like this fic, 'cause I'm pretty fond of it so far! n_n**

**—Maggie**

* * *

It is a normal enough Saturday morning. It's kind of foggy outside, but it's not terribly thick or difficult to see through, and the sun is still visible, so it's probably going to end up thinning out and eventually clearing entirely. I am in the kitchen with Julie, and she is giving me a lesson on how to make pancakes from scratch and fry bacon. She's been teaching me things like this ever since my re-intergration into human society, and we always manage to have fun, no matter what I'm learning. She is a good teacher; she's patient with me and my mistakes, and every time I mess up, she always encourages me to try again, telling me that I've done a good job even when I haven't. When I decided I wanted to learn how to cook and make food, she was a little surprised, but she went out and got some cookbooks and things, and I've been making slow but steady progress with different food items and recipes over the past week and a half or so.

Nora is there with us, and so is M (I'm still getting used to calling him Marcus), both of them watching us from where they sit at the kitchen table, Nora occasionally throwing little tips and tricks out to help me, mostly things like substitutes that can be used in place of different ingredients if ever needed. All four of us are talking and laughing and joking and having a good time together like friends do, something that still feels kind of surreal to M and I; not just the having a good time, but the having friends, too. For ages now, the only thing even close to a friend either of us has had is each other, so this hanging out with the girls and being actual friends with each other and with them is still kind of a new concept to us, and there are times when we find ourselves unable to believe that any of this new life we have is real. I think it's probably the same for most ex-Corpses. I mean, it would make sense, so I suppose that I just kind of assume that's how it is.

While Julie is showing me the best way to get the pancake out of the pan with the spatula to flip it over without tearing it, the phone rings suddenly. The phone lines actually work now, along with things like TV and radio, but there's not much on the airwaves right now, mostly just news about the progress being made, names and images of people in search of family members, that sort of thing. The world still hasn't been fully exhumed yet, and it probably won't be for quite some time to come, but we're definitely beginning to make progress, and at least that's something. Nora is the one who goes to answer it. I'm too busy focusing on what Julie is telling me to bother listening to Nora's end of the phone conversation, but when she comes back into the room, she looks kind of dazed.

"That was Rosy," she says. "He's on his way over here. He says a girl came here because she saw your and R's pictures on the news and apparantly recognized him. R, she says she's your sister."

I turn to look at her and freeze. So do Julie and M. We all just stop moving and stare at each other in shock. Julie is the first to recover. She blinks a few times and looks around. "Well," she says finally, "if this girl really is R's sister, then maybe seeing her will help bring back some memories. And R, you've kind of been wondering if you have any family out there anyway, so if this girl really is who she says she is, then at least you've got an answer now, right?" I blink and things come back into focus for me. "Y-Yeah," I stammer. "Yeah, you're right. Julie's right, Nora. This could turn out to be a good thing. Like Julie said, I'll have answers, won't I?"

"Exactly," M agrees.  
"I'm glad you think so, because Rosy said they'd be here any minute," Nora tells us. As if on cue, there is a knock on the front door. Julie turns the stove off and rinses her hands in the sink. "I'll go let them in," she says. "R..."

"I...I'm going upstairs for a minute. I'll be back down soon," I say. Julie nods in understanding and kisses my cheek before leaving the kitchen and heading for the foyer. I glance at M and Nora briefly. Nora gives me a small, reassuring smile, and M looks at me sympathetically. I give them a faltering grin, then turn and head for the stairs.

Julie's hope wall is now covered in polaroids of me, her, M, Nora, Mercey, members of the Dead in various stages of recovery, and society in its slow but steady exhumation. She has pressed the flowers from the airport in order to preserve them and placed them in glass. They now hang this way on the wall amidst all the polaroids. I sit cross-legged on the bed facing the hope wall. For the next few minutes or so, I remain this way, dividing that time between letting my eyes roam across everything on the wall and tilting my head back to trace the letters of the quotes painted on the ceiling. I can actually read them now, and my favorite one is the line from John Lennon's "Imagine" that my eyes had been drawn to the night I'd spent laying on Julie's floor when I was still Dead; "It's easy if you try."

After about five or ten minutes, I sigh, get up, and go downstairs. I follow the sound of voices talking until I find myself in the doorway of the living room. Julie notices me there first. "R!" she says as she gets up and comes over to me. For a minute or so, all I see is her face, and I forget that anything out of what's become the ordinary for me is going on. Then an unfamiliar voice cuts into the moment, and I'm pulled back into reality. The voice only says one word: Rayner.

Julie turns and I look up. I find myself staring at a girl with the same dark hair and blue eyes that I see every time I look at myself in a mirror. "Rayner," she repeats. Is she talking to me? Is that my name? If it is, it's definitely not what I'd have thought my name would be. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting my supposed sister to call me, but I do know that Rayner wasn't it. Something more along the lines of Riley, maybe, or Richard, or something like that. "R," Julie says, gently pulling me towards the couch and sitting down me down on it before she sits down next to me. "This is Raelyn," she tells me. "Raelyn Jardine. She came here from over three hours away just so she could see you in person."

"Rayner," the girl, Raelyn, according to Julie, says again. "Julie told me you don't remember anything from your old life, but...if you would at least hear me out, it would mean a lot to me." I don't know how to respond to this, so I just nod my head. A brief smile falters on her face as she sits down in a chair. "Julie says that you only remember your first initial, an R," she begins. "That R stands for Rayner. Rayner Aaron Jardine. You were born on the first of November in 1992 to Claire and Matt Jardine. You had a twin sister who was born five minutes after you, Raelyn Erica Jardine, me. We weren't just siblings, we were best friends. We fought sometimes, but who doesn't fight with their siblings every now and then?

"Every year for our birthday, our parents would take us to our favorite resturaunt for dinner, then we'd go home for cake and presents. After that, if you and I weren't too tired, we'd pick a movie off the shelf and Dad would make popcorn and Mom would turn off all the lights, and we'd sit on the couch together and watch the movie and pretend it was a movie theater. We had a dog, a big, beautiful German Shepard named Sherwood, and every Saturday starting when we were about ten, you and I would take him to the park and ride our bikes. We'd trained him to stay close to the bikes so that he wouldn't run off and we wouldn't have to wrestle with a leash while we rode.

"For our tenth birthday, Dad built us a treehouse in the backyard, and it was our favorite place to hide out and play together. Sometimes we'd have friends come over to spend the night, and Mom and Dad would let us sleep in the treehouse. We'd all take our sleeping bags up there, and we'd stay up late with a flashlight and scary stories. I remember one time, this girl named Samantha told that urban legend about Bloody Mary and the mirror thing, and it was the first time most of us there had heard it, and I started to get so freaked out, that it finally got to the point where you took one look at me and said, 'Cut it out, Sammi, you're scaring Rae, you're gonna give her nightmares!' But then she just kept going, and when I started hiding my face on your shoulder, you finally just picked up an empty water bottle and threw it at her head to shut her up. God, she was irked at you for that almost until she went home the next day!"

I take a couple of moments to absorb everything she's told me, then slowly blink. "I...I'm sorry...I don't remember any of that," I say. Raelyn's face falls a bit, but she nods as if to say she understands. "Even if you don't," she says quietly, "even if none of it ever comes back to you...I'm just glad that I got to see you again. You have no idea how relieved I am to know that you're okay. Mom and Dad were both gotten by zombies when the infection was still pretty new, and all we had was each other and Sherwood after that, but then he took off one night and we never saw him again. From that point on, it was just us. Then one day, you and a group of other guys about our age to look for survivors to bring back to the camp we were at and try to salvage as many things as possible so we could hopefully put some of it to use."

She wipes the corners of her eyes and shakes her head.

"Only Jamie made it back. He got there just in time to die of dehydration."

She takes a shaky breath and manages a sad smile. "Maybe now I can finally sleep again," she says. "Memory or not, and whatever you choose to go by, I'm just glad you're safe and happy, because at least now my mind can finally be put at ease, and if you're happy, then so am I. No matter what, though, you're always going to be my brother, whether you remember it or not. And, you know, you really could've done worse. With...everything, really. Out of all the people in the world you could've started this...whatever it is you've started with, I'm glad it was Julie. In the ten minutes or so I got to talk to her before you came in, I could tell that she's just...right. I can't explain it, really, she's just...right."

"I know," I say simply. Raelyn gives me another one of those brief and faltering smiles as she brushes some hair behind her ear and looks down at her lap. "Well," she says after a moment, "I guess I'd better get going. It's a pretty long drive back, you know? Julie, Nora, Marcus, it was nice meeting you guys. You too, Col. Rosso, and thank you for bringing me here. Ray—" She stops herself suddenly. "...R...Thank you. For listening, I mean. Just...Yeah...Thanks, I guess. I've really missed you, you know? You and Julie just...take care of each other, alright? Keep doing whatever it is you're doing to keep the recovory process moving forward, 'cause whatever it is, it's working. Like, really well. So...yeah. Just...keep doing what you're doing and take care of each other. And...I guess that's it, so...thank you. I'll, uh...I'll head on out now, I guess."  
"At least let me drive you back out to the borders," Rosso says as he stands up. Raelyn nods. "Sure," she says. "Thanks, Colonel."

She pauses in the doorway on her way out and turns to look at me over her shoulder one more time, smiling at me a bit shyly. She lifts one hand in a farewell gesture. "Bye," she says quietly. Then she turns, follows Rosso back into the foyer, the front door opens, then closes again, and just like that, Raelyn is gone.

* * *

**AN: OMG, okay, so one of my favorite parts in the book was when he was laying on her floor and he was able to read "T...R" on her ceiling, I just thought that was the coolest thing that he was starting to be able to read again, and it just made me go, "AAAAwww!" (I did a lot of that in various tones throughout that book, part of why I loved it was because of the huge range of emotions and reactions it got out of me) I don't want to spoil the movie for anyone, but let's just say I was slightly disappointed where my favorite book moments were concerned. n_n"**

**ANYWAY, yeah. So, um, I don't own anything or anyone except Raelyn, everybody else belongs to Isaac Marion, who I am obviously not. Oh, and the song "Journey to the Past" belongs to who ever wrote it for the movie _Anastasia, _which is something else that I don't have any sort of claim to.**

**—Maggie**

**PS: There's a specific movie reference in here. It's the term/word that R uses to describe the world's recovery, and it's in the paragraph that talks about Julie's hope wall and what she's decorated it with. If you've seen the movie and you found it and recognized it as a movie reference, let me know and I'll dedicate a chapter to you! :)**


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Okay, first off, this chapter is dedicated to Rue Bladesinger for finding the movie reference in the first chapter, everybody give Rue a big round of applause, WOO! Haha! Alright, so anyway, that same reference pops up again in this chapter (Rue, I'm sorry, but you no longer qualify to look for it since you already found it last chapter, I wanna give other people a chance. Sorry!), this time in the paragraph that talks about the building that's taking food and clothing donations to help with introducing the former Corpses back into human society.**

**ANYWAY, in other news, I have apparantly made a terrible mistake in the identity of Perry's actor. Last chapter, I said that it's the same guy who voiced Zuko in ATLA, but I have been told that this is incorrect. I could've sworn it was the same person, because I swear on my honor as a bibilophiliac that Perry sounded EXACTLY LIKE ZUKO. Being as big of an ATLA fan that I am, I am rather embarrassed to have made such a mistake. I'm SO insanely sorry, Zuko, please forgive me and don't burn me to a crisp, I didn't mean to, I swear!**

**Um, yeah, so that's about it.  
****OH, ONE MORE THING!**

**Before I forget, I want to let you guys know about this in case you weren't already aware, but one of my reviewers, sassybutt32 (lol, I LOVE that name, it makes me giggle!) has informed me that not only did Isaac Marion announce on his blog in October that there's going to be a sequel to Warm Bodies (it doesn't have a name yet, unfortunately), but last month, a prequel novella was released, and it's called _A New Hunger. _When I was messaging with sassybutt, she (assuming from the name you're a girl, correct me if I'm wrong) said that she thinks it's only available on Kindle and not as an actual book, but STILL! I have to find my Kindle before I can get it, lol, but once I figure out where I put the darn thing, you better believe I'm gonna get it first thing! XD**

**Anyway, yeah. So, I don't own Warm Bodies or Harry Potter. (Just read, you'll understand why I put that by the end of the second paragraph, I promise.)**

**Love ya guys in a totally not weird way! XD**

**—Maggie**

* * *

As I mentioned before, I am once again able to read, but not without some difficulty. I suppose that it's just one of several things that I shall have to re-adjust to or be re-taught over time now that I am no longer a Corpse. I know that Julie will help me with it, just as she's been helping me re-learn most other things I've been having difficulty with. My penmanship also appears to have suffered during my time being Dead. Of course, I don't know what it was like before, but now it is visibly shaky due to my uncertainty about what several things, including my spelling, punctuation, and (I am a bit embarrassed about this last one) how to hold the pen in my hand as I write. Sometimes Julie will hand me the pen, position my fingers on it the way they are supposed to go, and then put her hand over mine and guide it across the page as she re-teaches me how to form the letters and which ones belong in what place within the words.

She has been giving "homework" in order to help me with these two particular things. She will give me a book and ask me to read a certain amount of it, then write down my thoughts about what I read. I am currently working on one such assignment. After breakfast, she went upstairs and came back down with a hardback copy of the first Harry Potter book, telling me that she thought it was time for me to learn about the incredible world created by J.K Rowling and the people and creatures that inhabit it. She told me she wanted me to read to page twenty, then write down what I thought so far about the Dursleys. Well, I have read to page twenty, and so far, I am not at all fond of these people.

As I begin to broach the subject of how I thought Dudley had gotten what was coming to him when he got trapped in the snake habitat at the zoo, I hear something on the street below. My curiosity piqued, I put my pen down and stand up, then make my way over to the window and pull the curtains aside so I can see what's going on. When I look, I see a small group of kids playing hopscotch in an old parking lot across the street and down a little ways. Even from this distance, I can't help but notice how remarbly similar two of them look. I lean my forehead against the cool glass and close my eyes, and an image of Raelyn appears in my mind's eye. I have to admit, she _did _look an awful lot like me. Same eye color, same hair color, same facial structure.

"You okay, R?" Julie's voice says suddenly. I open my eyes and turn around. She's leaning against one of the bed posts and watching me with concern in her eyes. I nod. "Yeah," I say, "fine. I was just thinking is all."

"About what happened earlier, you mean, with Raelyn and everything?" she asks. I can't find the right words, so I just nod again in response. She smiles sympathetically and comes to hug me. "Don't worry about it," she says. "Rosy called a few minutes ago and told me that Raelyn got a call from one of her friends back at her camp. Turns out a few of that group set out a few days ago, and apparantly they just got back with help from one of the bigger places more like ours, and they took the rest of her group back with them. So she's pretty much got nowhere to go right now, so she's gonna be sticking around. Gives us time to figure this whole thing out." I nod again. A smirk begins to make its way onto her face. "Stop nodding, nodder," she says. I look up and our eyes meet. For a moment, we just stare at each other, then we both begin to crack up.

Julie kisses my cheek, then goes towards the desk. "Let's see what you've got so far," she says as she picks up the notebook I've been using to write all my thoughts on the books she's been giving me. She nods as she reads over it. "Good job, R," she says. "You've got a few misspellings and a couple spots where the punctuation needs some work, but overall, you've done really well so far." I come up beside her and look at the paper over her shoulder. "It's funny," I say. She looks up at me and frowns in confusion. "What is?" she asks.

"When I was Dead," I say, "I always had so much going on inside my head. All these thoughts and musings about the people around me and the world in general. I had all these beautiful words going through my mind, and I was able to use them to do such amazing things. They helped me climb mountains and cross oceans and lasso the stars in the sky and pull them down. And I wanted more than anything to share those words with the people around me, to tell them what I was thinking and feeling and let them know what was happening in my head. But when I opened my mouth to say everything I wanted to say, and tell them what was on my mind, all that ever came out were grunts and groans.

"I mean, we got the occasional word out, we all managed to every now and then. But our vocabulary was just so limited, you know? In my mind, I was able to perfectly plan out everything I wanted to say before I was going to say it, and it would involve words like...say, for example, 'radient,' or...or 'ominous,' but when I opened my mouth to say what I had planned, I would just grunt, or manage tiny syllables, and then I would get frustrated so quickly and easily and give up, and eventually it got to where I just stopped trying and let the words stay in my head even though I wanted to let them out just as much as they wanted to come out. The most I ever managed was eight syllables, and that was after I met you. It was, 'No matter what, stay together.' And even that came out fractured. For me, being able to express myself the way I always wanted to and never could...that's what's most gratifying about getting to be alive again. It feels so good to finally say everything I want to say without those infuriating restrictions."

"You definitely know how to use them," Julie says. "You're so eloquent, R, you know that? It just...astounds me sometimes. Part of me just can't believe that you're able to remember so many words and how to use them so beautifully, and yet can't remember a thing when it comes to your old life."

I frown. "Yeah," I say. "I've found myself thinking the same thing a few times." We are both silent for a few moments, then Julie suddenly begins to laugh. "What?" I ask. "What's so funny?" She shakes her head. "Nothing," she says. "It's just...I was _way _off, wasn't I? About your name, I mean. I was guessing things like Richard and Rafael and Ricky—"

"And Rambo," I add. She laughs again and nods.  
"Exactly," she says. "But Rayner...I don't think I've even heard that before, that must be like insanely rare or something."  
"I know," I tell her. "I don't know what I was expecting her to address me as, but it definitely wasn't that. I was thinking more along the same lines that you were; Ryan, Riley, that sort of thing."  
"You know," she says thoughtfully, "come to think of it, I don't think I've ever heard Raelyn before, either. I mean, it's pretty, don't get me wrong, I just don't think I'd heard it before she showed up."

I look at Julie's face and, not for the first time, am suddenly overwhelmed with how beautiful she is, and how lucky I was to have found her and been able to keep her alive, not to mention that she'd been able to forgive me for what I'd done to Perry. I still dream about him sometimes. Not very often, but they bother me when they do happen. I'd much rather forget about all that if it all possible, and I'd prefer that it be sooner rather than later. Either way, though, I sometimes still can't believe that she has accepted all of this—accepted _me—_so seamlessly into her life the way she has. I mean, don't get me wroing, I'm grateful for it. I'm just amazed at how easily she's been able to accept it all, especially after what happened with Perry.

I notice that she is looking at me expectantly and realize she must have said something I didn't hear. "Sorry," I say, "what?" She smiles at me. She has such a beautiful smile. "I asked if you wanted to to come with me to get Raelyn and bring her back here," she says. I frown in confusion. "Why are you bringing her here?" I ask. Julie shrugs. (I can't help but mentally laugh at the irony of this.) "She doesn't have a place to stay," she explains, "and Rosy's been so busy lately that he's rarely ever at his house anymore, so he was worried she'd get lonely if she stayed with him. I offered to let her stay here with us instead. I'm sorry, I know I should've asked if it was alright with you first, R, I just wasn't thinking, I guess."

I shake my head in response to this. "No, it's fine," I tell her. "I completely understand, I would've done the same thing. Um..." I run a hand through my hair. (Has it always been that soft? So many things are still so new and weird for me, and that's one of them. I constantly find myself playing with my hair and running my fingers through it. I just can't stop touching it for some reason, it feels so soft and nice, but at the same time, it's so strange, and something about it just fascinates me to no end.) "Yeah, sure," I say after a moment of thought. "I don't see any reason not to, so yeah, I'll come."

Julie grins and kisses my cheek. "Car keys are in my jacket pocket, I think," she tells me as we start heading for the bedroom door. "You wanna drive, or should I?" We reach the top of the stairs and I hesitate for a moment before answering. "You drive," I say finally. "I'm still pretty nervous behind the wheel, I've got a ways to go with my lessons and I'm a little paranoid about crashing into something stupid like a tree," I confess. Julie laughs, but not meanly. "I understand," she says. "Trust me, R, everybody feels that way when they're learning to drive. I remember when I first turned sixteen and was old enough to start working on getting my license. I got behind the wheel for the first time to take my test, and my grip was so tight on the wheel, my knuckles were white, and I was so tense the whole time, I breathed such a huge sigh of relief when it was over and I hadn't crashed into anything or killed anyone. It's totally normal to have those fears, but it'll pass over time, trust me."

She takes my jacket off of its hook next to hers and holds it out to me. It is not the same red hoodie that I wore when I was Dead; that was full of holes and filthy, and because it was a reminder of a time I would rather not dwell on, I chose to get rid of it. This jacket was a gift from Nora, her way of welcoming me back into human society. It's one of those that is made to look as if there are two jackets layered, when in reality, it is only one jacket. The outer "layer" is faux leather, and the inner "layer" is a gray "hoodie" like my old red one. It's one of those that works in most kinds of weather, I have discovered. Wearing it on a sunny day doesn't make me uncomfortably hot, but it keeps me plenty warm when temperatures drop.

Nora and Julie have been very helpful to both M and I in finding new clothes that work for us and fit comfortably. Most of it comes from what had once been a homeless shelter back before the infection got started, and now serves a similar purpose in society's exhumation by being a headquarters of sorts for those that wish to be reunited with loved ones, and those who have no place to call their own for the time being. Donations of food, clothes, toys, and other things have been made to this place in order to help those who have recovered and are recovering from the infection be intergrated back into human society. All of us former Corpses are very grateful to those who have made these donations, and to the volunteers who are keeping this place running smoothly.

Julie feels around in her jacket pockets for Mercey's keys, then lets out a small exclamation of victory as she pulls them from her left pocket. She shakes them triumphantly and grins. "Let's go," she says as she opens the door. I follow her out into warm mid-morning sun, and we head down the driveway towards a now clean, working, and beautifully shining Mercey.

* * *

Raelyn is sitting on the top porch step of Rosy's house when we pull into the driveway with earbuds plugged into an iPod that she appears to be playing some sort of game on. Clearly, she was expecting us to come. She has one earbud out, and looks up when she hears us coming. As we get closer, I take the opportunity to look at her more closely.

Her shoulder-length dark hair is held away from her face with a pale green tye-dye headband that wraps all the way around her head, which exposes small round stud earrings that I can't see very clearly from where I am, but look like they might be purple-ish. She's wearing a necklace that I am only aware of because of the fact that the sunlight is glancing off of it, and at her feet there rests a worn leather rucksack. Her shoes are classic Converse hi-tops done in a faded Union Jack print, though whether they were made to look faded or this is due to age, I am unable to tell. Her clothes are simple; navy blue leggings that stop just below her knees, and a black jersey dress with words and graphics printed in white and red on the right side of the skirt, whose length is probably why she's wearing the leggings. She does not appear to be wearing any makeup, but then again, who am I to say for certain when I know nothing about the stuff?

Like her name, she is pretty, and as I noticed before, she _does _bear a resemblance to the face that stares back at me when I look into a mirror. She grabs her back and shoves the iPod into it as she stands up and comes over to the car. "Thanks a ton for this," she says as she slides into the backseat. "I really owe you guys for this, no kidding. When Veronica called and told me what had happened, I started to kind of freak out a little with nowhere to go."

"It's no problem, really," Julie tells her, shifting Mercey into reverse and backing out of the driveway. "We've got a spare room that Nora usually stays in when she spends the night, but otherwise it's not really used very much. Oh, hey, I just remembered, if you ask him a question or something and he starts to shrug, stop him before he can finish. He does it out of habit from when he was Dead, but I've been trying to help him break out of it since he can actually use his words now."

"I'm getting there," I say, slightly embarrassed by Julie bringing this up. She smiles and takes one hand off the wheel for a moment to give my hand a gentle squeeze. "You are," she says. "You really are, you're making such great progress and I'm so proud of you for trying so hard and being so determined to re-learn all this stuff. I know it can't be easy for you, R, but you just refuse to give up, and I'm proud of you for that." I feel myself blush a little (something else I'm still so thrilled I'm able to do now) as I turn to look out my window. I see a woman resting on a bench on a second floor balcony, leaning back with her eyes closed and her face turned towards the sun, and I suddenly find myself thinking about how Julie had been on her own balcony the night I'd snuck inside the borders of the now-absent wall to find her.

When I tune back into the present, I realize that Julie is telling Raelyn about helping Nora put makeup on me to make me look alive, and I feel my face begin to burn with embarrassment. "I thought we agreed nobody would find out about that, Julie!" I interrupt, hiding my face in my hands. She and Raelyn laugh. "Oh, I'm sorry, R," she says, and I feel her rub my shoulder. "I didn't know it would embarrass you that much, I promise I won't bring it up again. Look, we're home now, so you can run upstairs and hide under the covers for awhile if you want."

I lift my head and grin at her. "No way," I tell her as I unbuckle and get out of the car. "I've still got a thing or two to say about that book, and I don't plan on doing any hiding until I've given that Dudley kid a piece of my mind."

"Ooh," Julie says, making playful fists at me. "Tough guy today, huh? Alright, then go finish givin' 'em the what-for and I'll show Raelyn around the house."  
I am hardly listening anymore, though, because I am already almost to the front door. As I open it, I cannot keep a smile from spreading onto my face as I once again think to myself how lucky I am to have Julie in my life now.

* * *

**AN: Okay, so what R says about being able to use words to "climb mountains, cross oceans," etc. when he was Dead? It's not word-for-word, I know, but if it sounds familiar, that's because it's out of the book. I just LOVED how Marion described what R was mentally doing with words, so I just had to borrow that. Since I can't remember exactly what the book said, I kind of had to improvise a little, which is why it's not word-for-word.**

**And yes, I am aware that in the book, the highest record of syllables for him was only six, but when we went to see the movie on Friday, at one point my brother leaned across the armrest between us and whispered, "That's eight syllables! 'No-ma-tter-what-stay-to-get-her.' That's eight!" And the biggest grin spread across my face and I just sort of clapped very softly and said, "Oh, yay! Great job, R, that's so great!"**

**And it just thrilled me so much and made me so happy for R, that I just HAD to go with eight syllables instead of six as his record for this. n_n :')**

**—Maggie**


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: This chapter is dedicated to adcgreengirl22 for finding the movie reference. She found in it in the first chapter, but I had the second one posted before I saw her review, so I'm giving her this chapter instead. Sorry about seeing it too late, green, that's totally my fault, and I apologize, I'll try not to let it happen again in the future!**

**In other news, while I was at school today, an image appeared in my mind's eye. An image of what, you ask? An image of a baby girl with beautiful blue eyes like Nicholas Hoult's and blonde fluff on her head instead of hair. And I said to myself, "SHE'S BEAUTIFUL! I SHALL CALL YOU DIANE, AFTER JULIE'S MOTHER!"**

**And so, dear readers, I am now asking you if you would like me to post a little one-shot or something featuring R as a new daddy with baby Diane, because I already kind of have a basic outline for one, and I'd like to know if you want me to share it, so let me know in your reviews. And, once again, anyone who has found the movie reference in the past chapters and tells me will get a future chapter dedicated to them. Rue, green, you guys are out of the running because I want to give others a chance, so I'm sorry, ladies, but please step aside. P:**

**Much love, all!**

**—Maggie**

* * *

That evening after dinner is eaten and the dishes have been cleaned, Julie, Raelyn, and I head into the living room together. I pick up _The Sorcerer's Stone _from where I left it on the coffee table earlier while Julie goes hunting for the TV remote. "Julie," I say. "How far do you want me to read this time?" She lets a small cry of triumph as she moves a chair cushion and finds the remote. "Um, try to get to the end of the Sorting Ceremony if you can," she tells me. "And then when you're finished, for the written portion this time, I want you to talk about, um...your first impressions of Ron, Hermione, and...hm...I'll let you choose between Snape, Dumbledore, and McGonagall. And if your hand doesn't get too tired, I'll give you bonus points if you tell me what turned out to be wrong or right about your impression of Ron since there's going to be a lot more of him than the other two. Well, at least until...Oh, you know, nevermind. I don't wanna spoil it for you, especially not that part."

"Oh, are you reading Harry Potter?" Raelyn asks, looking at me with wide eyes and a big grin. "That was one of our favorite series when we were kids, we used to be experts on those! Julie, you should've seen us both when we read the last book and Bellatrix got Dobby, we were both these blubbering, incoherent wrecks, we couldn't even see the words on the pages as anything but meaningless blurs, let alone read them, it took us a good twenty minutes, at _least , _before we could finally pull ourselves together and keep going. Oh, I remember one time when our mom was bitching at us to clean our room and stuff, and then she started throwing all these random pieces of clothing at us, and we took one look at each other and we both just knew in that weird way that twins have that we were thinking the exact same thing, so then we both grabbed whatever clothing article was closest to us, and we dodged around her and took off running through the house yelling at the top of our lungs, 'Master has presented Raelyn and Rayner with clothes! Raelyn and Rayner are free elves!' Oh, she was _so _pissed at us, we got grounded for like two weeks, but it was totally worth it! Ah, yeah, good times, good times..."

I do not understand the humor in any of this, but Julie apparantly finds it to be absolutely hilarious, because she is nearly doubled over with laughter by the time Raelyn has said the words "dodged around her." I merely look back and forth between them in confusion, completely lost. "I don't get it," I say finally. Julie shakes her head and puts a hand on my shoulder. "You won't until you get to the second book," she tells me. "Once you do, though, you'll think it's comedic gold, trust me."

I look down at the volume in my hands, silently wondering just how long it will take for me to get to the second book at the rate I am currently able to go with the reading difficulties I've been facing. I have seen the other six books in Julie's bookcase, and while this one is not nearly as thick as the others, especially the later ones, it is still thick enough to have intimidated me some when Julie first brought it to me this morning. Julie has promised me that once I finish this book, we will watch the movie, and that we will do the same thing with the other books, as well. She explained to me that the last book was split into two movies due to it being much too long to fit all the major plot points into a single movie, and told me that when the time comes, she will have me read to the part of the book where the seventh movie ends, and once we have watched it, she will have me read the rest of the book before watching the eighth and final movie.

I look up and find that Julie has turned the TV on, and she and Raelyn have both gotten absorbed in watching the reports on the progress being made in different parts of the world as we move steadily through the recovery process, one step at a time. I look back down at the book I am holding, then open it to the page where I have folded the top corner down to mark my place. I unfold this corner, and once my eyes have found the paragraph I stopped at, I begin reading.

* * *

I am dreaming again, just as I have been nearly every night since my return to the Living. This dream, though, is not like the others I've had. My dreams have been about Julie, mostly, but also about Nora and M, occasionally about Perry, about the airport and the people in it, things like that. Not this one. This one is focused on a boy and a girl, siblings, who both appear to be in their early adolesence. They share the same blue eyes and dark hair, and their faces are the same shape. They are sitting together on the floor in front of a bunkbed, and a German Shepard occupies the lower bunk, its head resting on its front paws, which hang slightly over the edge of the mattress. The boy has a thick book resting in his lap, which he is reading aloud from.

"'...told him that the stone would have the power to bring back the dead,'" he reads. "'Finally, Death turned to the third brother. A humble man, he asked for something that would enable him to go forth from that place without being followed by Death. And so it was that Death reluctantly handed over his own Cloak of Invisibility. In due course—'"

"Wait a minute," the girl cuts in. _"Death _had an Invisibility Cloak? Really? I find that just a bit difficult to believe, don't you?"  
"Shut up and let me read, will you?" the boy says. The girl rolls her eyes in response.

"As I was saying..." he goes on. "'In due course, the brothers separated, each for his own destination. The first brother travelled for a week or more, and, reaching a distant village, sought out a fellow wizard, with whom he had a quarrel. Naturally with the Elder Wand as his weapon, he could not fail to win the duel that followed. Leaving his enemy dead upon the floor, the oldest brother proceeded to an inn, where he boasted of the powerful wand which he had snatched from Death himself and of how it made him invincible. That very night, another wizard crept upon the oldest brother as he lay wine-sodden upon his bed. The thief took the wand, and, for good measure, slit the oldest brother's throat. And so, Death took the first brother for his own. Meanwhile—'" He falters as his eyes move upwards to the ceiling, then back down to the book. "'Meanwhile...the second brother...the second brother journeyed to his own home, where he lived alone. Here, he took out the stone which had the power to recall the...the dead...'"

He sighs, then closes the book and sets it aside without bothering to mark his place. He looks up, just as Perry used to do, and says quietly, "Wake up now, R. Please. Do us both a favor and wake up, please. R. R, can you hear me? R? Wake up, R. Wake up...Wake up!...Listen to me, R, and WAKE UP!"

* * *

My eyes snap open and I sit bolt upright in bed. I look at the digital clock on the nightstand and see that it is, as of right now, just barely past six-thirty in the moning. It's still dark outside, and Julie is still asleep beside me. I can instinctively feel almost right away that I will not be able to get back to sleep any time soon, so after giving a bit of thought to what I should do with myself for the time being, I get up, take the Harry Potter book off the desk, and head downstairs so I can turn on a light to read without waking up Julie.

When I get into the living room, I am surprised to find that there is already a lamp on. Raelyn looks up from reading what she's holding, which I realize is the notebook that I've been using for my "homework." I look around a bit awkwardly for a moment, then sit down on the couch, angling myself so that my body is turned in her direction. "Where'd you get that?" I ask. She looks down at the notebook, then back at me. "You left it sitting on the kitchen table," she tells me. "I couldn't sleep, and I found it. I was curious about what it was, so I picked it up. I'm sorry, I—"  
"Don't be," I tell her. "I shouldn't have left it out where just anyone could pick it up."

She holds it out to me. I take it from her and flip through the pages. "Julie's been giving me books," I explain. "She asks me to read to a certain point, then I use this notebook to write down my thoughts on certain subjects and characters. It's helping me re-learn how to read and write. That's what I'm doing with the first Harry Potter right now, actually. That's why she was telling me earlier to read to the end of the Sorting Ceremony and write down my first impressions of those characters. I couldn't sleep, either," I add. "That's why I came down here. I was going to turn on a light so I could read without waking up Julie."

Raelyn gives me a wry, sideways look and doesn't speak for a moment. "Are you...Are you guys, like...you know...sleeping together?" she asks. For several moments, I just stare at her without saying anything. "That depends on what you mean by 'sleeping together,'" I say finally. "If you're asking if we share a bed with each other, then yes, we're sleeping together. If you mean sexually, well, that's not really any of your business, now, is it?" Something about this, about the way I am speaking to her, feels completely natural, as if I've done it a million times before, though I can't say why that is. Come to think of it, everything about this—sitting here with her in a mostly darkened room while the sky outside is still dark and the rest of the world is asleep, talking to her about what's going on in my life, the whole thing in general—it just feels so right in ways that I can't explain. It feels as natural as laying in bed with Julie every night and holding her in my arms while we sleep.

Is she actually my sister? Is my name seriously Rayner? (Is that even an actual name to begin with?) I have been very happy with my life ever since Julie helped me cure myself of the infection. She has been teaching me things that I probably already knew, but forgot during my time as a Corpse. She is a good teacher and a wonderful girlfriend and an all-together amazing person, and I am incredibly grateful to have her in my life. M and Nora are such great friends. I could not ask for better. The world is slowly and steadily making its way towards recovery, and it is able to do so thanks to something that Julie and I started together. I cannot imagine my life without her now that she is a part of it. When I try to picture my future, no matter what I come up with, she is always there beside me. I could have gone the rest of my life never remembering my own name, or knowing anything about my family and the life I used to have, and I would have been perfectly fine with that, because in this new life, Julie, Nora, and M are all the family I need, and my name is simply R.

But instead of leaving it at that, the universe has instead brought this stranger into the equation, this Raelyn Jardine, who claims to be my twin sister. She claims that we were best friends, that we had a tree-house and a dog named Sherwood, that we had a mother named Claire and a father named Matt and that we shared a love for the Harry Potter books with one another. That we rode our bikes in some park every Saturday, and spent our time wandering through fields and down roads with the dog while we talked. That I threw an empty water bottle at a girl's head once to get her quiet so Raelyn wouldn't have nightmares.

Is any of it true? Is she truly who she claims to be? I do not know, nor do I pretend to. All I know is that I would like to find out the truth; about Raelyn, about everything she's said so far about my supposed past life.

I am insanely grateful to be alive again, more than words can express, and I am thrilled with the life that I have stumbled into with Julie. Still, though; at least when I was Dead, I didn't have to worry about all these things.

* * *

**AN: To answer R's question, yes, Rayner seriously is an actual name. It's rare, but it's a name. I think it's based on some German word or something, I'm not sure. It can be found on a website called Behind the Name, which is where I go for most of my character naming needs, because it has an extensive database with reliable information on the etymology and origin of hundreds upon thousands of different names from all over the world and throughout history, so if you ever have trouble coming up with a good name, I highly recommend this site, and for last names, it has a sister site called Behind the Surname, which is linked to on Behind the Name and is where I got the name Jardine. I can't remember what country that one comes from, but it's rooted in a word that means "gardener," as in like, it was a last name for people who worked as gardeners.**

**ANYWAY, yeah. Um, I promised Rue Bladsinger that I would go check out her Warm Bodies fic after I got this chapter posted, so I'll shut up now and go do that, though I might procrastinate a few more minutes on Memecenter, to be totally honest, haha! :P So, anyway, yeah. GOODBYE AND GOODDNIGHT, ALL!**

**—Maggie**


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Okay, so this is a pretty short filler chapter. I just finished "The New Hunger" today, and it turns out that Julie's mom's name is Audrey. In the movie, though, in one of Perry's memories, Julie's dad referred to his wife as Diane, which is how I ended up thinking that's what it was. I dunno, maybe Diane was her middle name or something? I don't know.**

**"Nothing is permanant. Not even the end of the world."**

**That was the very last sentence in the novella, and I just love it, don't you? I also found out how Nora lost that finger. It was bitten off at the knuckle by a Boney woman, then her brother Addis chopped the rest of it off with a hatchet so she wouldn't get infected. Less than twenty minutes later, Addis ended up getting infected. Oh, irony. Cruel, cruel irony.**

**This is how M and R introduced themselves to each other:  
****  
*le walking side-by-side*  
R: *le looks at M* Name?  
M: *le looks at R "as if he's been asked to do something unnatural* Mmmm...  
R: *le nods* Rrrrr...**

**I thought that was kind of cute and funny in that weird little Zombie R kind of way. n_n**

**Anyway, just wanted to share a little bit of the wonderfulness that is the prequel to Warm Bodies. **

**Um, so, the stuff that Julie is saying about Canada and her mom and the driving and all that, I got that all out of the novella. Because that's basically her situation in the novella, which is divided between what happens with Julie, with Nora, and with R, and how they were all tied together from the very beginning, even though none of them knew it. He saw her for the first time when she was TWELVE, can you belive that?! I, personally, found it awesome, because TALK ABOUT BEING FATED TO MEET.**

**Much love, all!**

**—Maggie**

* * *

Julie and I are out scouting for any stray Dead that might have been missed previously. We are also checking the area for any camps of Living survivors who might not yet know about what is happening so that we can bring them back with us. This is someting that we have started doing at least once a week together as a way of contributing to the progress being made. So far, we have found nothing on this run. It has, however, given us time to simply talk with one another, which is something we both enjoy. She is telling me more about her past and growing up, and I love that I am learning more about the girl that I have fallen in love with, which is something that I no longer doubt is entirely true; I am in love with Julie Grigio. It is as plain and simple as that, and it always will be.

"My mom's name was Diane," she is saying. "Even once we were driving through city after city, each one completely abandoned, she somehow managed to stay optimistic and make jokes. We tried to cross the border into Canada when I was twelve, but things didn't work out the way we'd hoped, so we had to turn around and head back through Seattle. And we'd just driven all the way from New York, can you believe that? Hundreds and hundreds of miles, and it all ended up being for nothing in the end. We'd all gotten our hopes up, even Dad. We thought we'd be able to get to Vancouver and be safe, but we never even made it past the huge barrier that had been built along the border. I mean, I guess it did kind of turn out to be a good thing, because otherwise you and I probably would have never even lain eyes on each other, let alone started this...whatever it is we've started, this cure. It's just that at the time, you know, that was all any of us had to look forward to, so when it didn't end up working out, it was pretty disappointing, you know?"

"Do you miss them very often?" I ask. "Your family, I mean?" For a few moments, she doesn't say anything and we walk in silence. Then she stops, takes my hand in hers, and smiles at me. "You're my family now, R," she says. "You and Nora are all the family I need. So to answer your question, no. Not really. After everything I've been through, I've figured out that it's generally not a very good idea to dwell on the past if you can help it. I've seen some really scary stuff, R, and a lot of it used to give me nightmares. I wish that I could forget it all as easily as you've forgotten your old life. But I can't. As much as I would like to, I can't. I try not to let it bother me, though. I just don't think about the scary or the bad things from my past, and instead I just think about the good and the happy."  
"Did I scare you?" I ask. She studies my face before answering.

"I thought you did," she says. "At first, I really thought you did. But looking back on it now, I don't think that anymore. I can't really put a name to what it was, but I don't think it was fear, not anymore. Shock, maybe. But not fear." I tilt my head slightly as I look at her. "I never wanted to be scary to you," I say. "I just kept telling myeself over and over again, 'Don't be creepy, don't be creepy, don't be creepy.' I'm not sure I pulled that off very well, but...I never wanted to scare you. I just wanted to keep you safe and...Don't get mad, but...I may have also told you a couple of little white lies so that you would stay with me a little longer. I wasn't trying to cause as much trouble as what ended up happening as a result, I just...I'd never seen anyone like you before, you fascinated me, and I was lonely, and I just...wanted you to stay for a little while."

Julie shakes her head as she puts her arms around my neck. "It's fine, R," she says. "I'm not mad. If anything, I'm happy you did that, because if you hadn't, we might not be standing here like this right now." She kisses me, and I kiss her back. One of my favorite things about being with Julie is the way it feels when we kiss. Her lips are soft and warm, and they mold together with mine so well, almost as if this is what our lips were meant to do. I could just lose myself kissing her like this nonstop for hours on end if it weren't for the simple fact that we both need to breathe. Unfortunately, though, we are jolted out of our private little world a bit too soon for our liking by the sound of footsteps, but not regular footsteps. They do not sound like the way a Living person normally walks, but they also do not posess the slow, shuffling quality that distinguish the gait of the Dead. Rather, they consist of a thump, followed by a dragging sound. Thump, drag, repeat. Thump, drag, repeat. Over and over again.

Julie and I break apart and turn to see who the owner of these footsteps might be. As it turns out, they belong to a young man who is clutching a badly bleeding wound on his left shoulder. He is dirty and his clothing is ragged and torn, and he has dried blood in several places, as well as fresh blood seeping out of wounds ranging in size from small to the one on his shoulder. He looks exhausted and about to collapse at any given second. His eyes are barely halfway open, and I imagine that if he were to speak, his voice would be very hoarse and raspy. The strange sound of his footsteps is caused by the limp he is suffering from. He stops walking and tilts his head back, lifting his face to the sky. He lets out a strangled cry, then starts to lurch forward. Julie and I spur into motion and rush to catch him before he hits the ground.

His eyes focus on Julie for a brief instant, and then he is out cold.

* * *

**AN: Short chapter is short. O.O lol! Like I said, it's a filler. I've started working on that one-shot with baby Diane, and today, another idea popped into my head, but I think I'll be able to incorporate this new one somewhere into this story. It has to do with R, his fingers, and an instrument. I'm not teeeelliiiiing! *le innocent face***

**I OWN NOTHING AND DENY EVERYTHING! XD**

**—Maggie**


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG AND INFINITY MORE OMGS! YOU GUYS! YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS!**

**Okay, so yesterday, I needed to know Rosso's first name for something else I'm writing that may or may not ever make it onto this site, and I couldn't remember if it's ever mentioned, so my brother gets his iPad and we type into Google, "In Warm Bodies, are we ever told Rosso's first name?," right? And I'm scrolling down the page while he's on his videogames, and then I FREAKED OUT! Why, you ask? ****Because the result above the last one on the first page? Guess what it was.**

**THIS. FAN. FICTION.**

**CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT?! MY WRITING IS ON GOOGLE! _MINE!_** **I STILL CAN'T GET OVER IT! *le dies***

**—Maggie who is so ecstatic that she's about to explode**

* * *

Julie and I are sitting on a crate of supplies together outside a medical tent, waiting for Nora to come and tell us what the deal is with the mystery man. "I hope he's alright," Julie says. I nod in agreement. "Yeah," I say a bit vaugely. Julie frowns. "What are you doing, R?" she asks. I look at her. "What do you mean?" I say, answering a question with a question. She gently takes hold of my wrist and lifts my hand. "Your fingers," she says. I look, and sure enough, my fingers are twitching slightly, but not in a way that is at all spasmodic or uncontrollable. After a few more seconds, they stop moving completely. I know instinctively that I was in control of them the entire time, and yet I was completely unaware that I was even doing anything with them until Julie pointed it out.

She shakes her head. "The way you were tapping them against your leg," she says, "it almost seemed to have some specific pattern or rhythm to it or something, almost like you were..." She trails off, her face thoughtful as she lets go of my hand. "What? Almost like I was what?" I ask. Julie shakes her head again. "Almost like—"

"Hey, guys," Nora says, cutting Julie off. I forgive her immediately for it, though, since she has no idea that she's just interrupted our conversation. Julie and I both stand in almost the same instant that Nora appears in front of us. "How's he doing, did you find anything out about him?" Julie asks. Nora looks at the clipboard she is carrying. "He'll be alright," she says. "Totally unconcious, a little dehydrated, badly injured in several places, suffering from moderate blood loss, and in need of some nourishment, preferrably actual food instead of carbtein given his overall condition, but his vitals are stable and we've got his injuries bandaged up, so once he's awake and we've gotten some food and liquid into him, he should be fine. We found some ID on him, a driver's license, not that it was much use to him anymore, but if he hadn't been carrying, we wouldn't know that his name is Flynn Sutton. We also know that he's seventeen, but that's all we've got so far. Until he wakes up, we won't know anything else about him, let alone how he ended up in such bad condition. It's a really good thing you guys found him when you did, otherwise, who knows what might've happened to him?"

I see Raelyn watching from around a corner. Her eyes seem to be glistening with unshed tears. I am the only one who notices her, and she is gone before I can tap Julie on the shoulder and point her out. I excuse myself from the conversation, telling the girls that I have to go and meet M because I agreed to help him with something, and go after her. I follow her out of what Nora calls the Med Tent City and through the streets. She does not seem to have any specific destination, and probably doesn't even know where she is going, but after a few minutes, I realize that the area we are in is familiar to me; I have been here before; twice, to be exact; yes, there it is; the way into the baseball stadium that I learned about from one of Perry's memories, the way I got past the wall that used to surround the city when I was Dead so that I could find Julie and warn her that the Boneys wanted both our heads on a silver platter for starting this insanely special thing together.

I cup my hands around my mouth. "Raelyn!" I call. She turns, her expression changing to one of surprise. I had thought for sure she'd known I was following and was deliberately leading me somewhere more secluded. Apparantly, I had been wrong; she had no idea she was being tailed by anyone. She looks around, probably trying to find a way she can get away from me, but I am familiar enough with this area to know that there is none, and her search is futile. I manage to herd her closer to the sneakway into the stadium, effectively cornering her so I can talk to her.

"Leave me alone, Rayner," she says, "I don't feel like talking to you right now, or anybody else." I cross my arms, planting my feet firmly so that I block her only path out. "Too bad," I say, trying not to sound mean about it. "If you really are my sister," I continue, "then don't shut me out, tell me what's wrong, maybe I can help. You looked about ready to cry back there, how much did you hear?"  
"Enough," she mutters, wrapping her arms around herself and looking at the ground so she won't have to meet my eyes. "Well...what part upset you?" I ask. She shrugs. I frown. "If I'm not allowed to shrug, then neither are you," I say. She sighs. "His name," she says finally. Realization dawns on me.

"You know him, don't you?" I ask, though it comes out sounding more like a statement than a question. Her face hardens suddenly and she looks up at me. "I knew _a _Flynn Sutton," she says firmly. "There's more than one Flynn in the world, and Sutton's not that uncommon of a last name, just because this guy's name is Flynn Sutton, that doesn't mean that he's the same one I knew. It could be a total coincidence. Seriously, Rayner—"

"Would you stop calling me that?!" I snap. I don't mean to. I just suddenly can't control it anymore. "My name is not Rayner. It is R. No more, no less. Just R. And I want to make that clear to you. I want you to understand that whatever I may have been called before does not, _can _not apply to me now, because I have no memory of my old life, and therefore it is completly irrelevant to my new life. It means nothing to me since I can't remember it. Whatever my name may have been before, that identity no longer belongs to me. It is not my own, not anymore. Maybe I really was Rayner Jardine once-upon-a-time, but not anymore. Now, I am simply R."

"I...I'm sorry," she says, not meeting my eyes. "I didn't know you felt so strongly about it. I just...Look, just leave me alone for awhile, alright? I need to...Just don't follow me." Before I can react, she has brushed past me and is walking away, arms around herself and head down, not once looking back at me. I sigh in defeat, then turn and start heading for home.

* * *

I open the front door and hang my jacket up. "Julie?" I call. "Hello?"  
"In the living room," her voice responds. I head toward the living room and stop short in the doorway. "Um...what is all this?" I ask. Julie has a keyboard set up in the middle of the room, the wire trailing off into some obscure corner near the window, probably plugged into the outlet over there. There is a book of sheet music already propped up against the detachable music rack. Julie makes a "come here" motion with her index finger. Confused, I obey.

"Remember earlier when you were tapping against your knee?" she asks. I look at her, wondering what this has to do with anything. "Yeah?" I say uncertainly. She leads me to the keyboard and takes hold of my wrists, placing my hands on the keys with hers resting on top of them, not unlike the way she does when guiding my hand while I write. She rests her ching on my shoulder and looks at me. "It reminded me of what my mom used to do with her fingers when she played piano. And so I thought to myself, 'Maybe, just maybe, he's got some sort of musical talent hiding in there somewhere,' and so I decided to dig this thing out and test my theory. I mean, it would make sense, don't you think? With all the music you had in that plane of yours, there must've been a reason for that, and it only seems logical that maybe it was because you had some sort of special connection to music. So, it's a possibility, at the very least, right?"

I take a moment to consider this, but Julie starts speaking again before I can come up with a response. "Look," she says, "I don't want you to do much with this, R. I just want you to look at this, even just the first measure would be great, and I want you to see if you can read it and play it, alright?" After a moment, I nod. "Okay," I agree. "Yeah, sure. I'll see if I can do the first measure, sure." Julie smiles and kisses my cheek. "Great," she says as she takes a few steps back to give me room. "Just take all the time you need to look at the notes." I nod again, then look at the sheet music in front of me. The title printed at the top reads "The Kingdom Where Nobody Dies." I look for a composer, but none is named. Then my eyes wander to music itself.

As instinctively as breathing, I immediately identify the first note as a double quarter, followed by a double-half, all four of them on the left-hand. This repeated once, then the measure was over. I glance over the rest of the page; it has notes stacked on top of each other, and strikes me as both simple and complex at the same time, and this is only the first page of the song. "There are a lot of whole notes down here," I say, indicating a measure on the third scale down. "And look; there's more down here at the beginning of this next scale down. They're connected to the ones up here by these lines, see? They're supposed to be held, the ones up here, and then transition into these ones down here. Wow, though, look at how long those ones are supposed to be held. And nothing in between. And the ones down here are exactly the same as the ones up here, it's wanting the player to hold these ones just to transition into the exact same ones, how unnessecary can you get?"

"R!" Julie says excitedly, making me jump a little in surprise. "R, you're doing it!" she says. I blink. "What?" I ask. "What am I doing?"  
"Reading music!" she cries, running over and throwing her arms around me, planting a huge kiss on my cheek. "You're reading sheet music, R!" she says again. I screw up my face. "I am?" I say dumbly. Julie laughs and nods. "Yes!" she says. "Yes, you are! Oh my god, this is incredible! You have to try playing it, R, you just have to."  
"You mean like right now?" I ask. Julie nods again, her blue eyes wide. "Yes, right now," she says.

"Like..._right now, _right now?"  
"Oh my god, R, quit stalling and just play, will you?!"

I can't help but laugh. She knows me so well already. I put my hands back on the keys and take another look at the first few notes. I can feel my smile slowly fading as I study the music in front of me. I take in a breath, then let it out slowly and close my eyes. And then, suddenly...

Suddenly there is music.

Filling the room and the air, surrounding me like Sinatra used to in the 747. I hear Julie gasp. I open my eyes. The first thing I see is my own hands, and I understand why Julie gasped. I am completely astounded by what my own fingers are doing. They are flying effortlessly across the keys, and I am not giving a single thought to making it happen. I am not conciously giving the command for this to happen, and until I opened my eyes, I was unaware that they were even moving.

Just as soon as it began, the music stops as I reach the end of the first page. I pull my hands away from the keyboard and stare at them in awe, my eyes wide. As I continue to stare, Julie's hands appear in my line of vision. She places her hands palm-to-palm with mine. I look up and meet her eyes. They are as wide as mine feel. Our fingers lock together. "R," she says, shaking her head in wonder. "You...You're a musician, honey, you're...Oh my god...I have the world's most talented boyfriend."

I laugh. "Well," I say, "I dunno about that." Julie takes my face between her hands and looks me right in the eyes. "Eloquence," she says, "piano, and—hello! The reason the world is in pheonix mode right now. That's pretty special if you ask me." A smile spreads onto my face. Julie returns it and kisses me. I hear the front door open.

"Hello!" a voice says. We break apart and find Raelyn in the doorway, hands up in a surrender fashion. "Am I interrupting something?" she asks. "'Cause if you guys want some privacy, I can—"  
"No, no, you're fine," Julie says, shaking her head. "We were just celebrating the discovery that R's a pianist, that's all." Raelyn's eyebrows go up slightly, then gives a quick bob of her head. "Yeah," she says. "We took lessons together for over ten years before our schedule got so over-loaded that we just had to drop a few things before the stress drove us both insane. We felt like we'd learned enough about pianos to be able to take things on our own from there, so that ended up getting dropped."

I blink and shake my head slightly. "And you didn't think to tell me this?" I say. She shrugs. Must run in the family or something. "I didn't think it was something you'd care about at a time like this." Julie and I exchange a look with one another, then turn back to Raelyn. I stand up. "We ever play anything together?" I ask. Raelyn nods. "Oh, yeah," she says, "all the time, why?" Julie and I look at each other again and smile. I motion Raelyn over. "Come pick something and let's play," I tell her. Her eyes widen. "Are—Are you serious?" she asks in disbelief. I nod. "Yeah," I say. "Which part did I usually play, bass or treble clef?"

She blinks and lifts her headband to put an escapbed lock of hair back in place as she comes to join us by the keyboard. "Um, we usually alternated. I would play bass on one song while you did treble, then we'd trade when we started a new song," she says. I nod and run my fingers through my hair. (Again, has it always been so soft? And will I ever be able to quit touching it all the time?) "Alright," I say. "Well, which do you want right now?"  
"You take treble, I don't mind."

"Works for me," I say. I turn to Julie. "Do you have any other music?" I ask her. She nods. "Yeah, I've got my mom's old books and things in a closet upstairs, just let me go get it," she says. She leaves the room and I can hear her footsteps on the staircase. After a few moments, she returns with a cardboard box bearing the words DIANE'S PIANO MUSIC in thick black Sharpie. Julie sets it down on the arm of the couch and opens it. "She had everything, I tell ya," she says. "Lloyd Weber, Beethoven, Debussy, Burwell, Desplat, Shore—Howard Shore, that is—Sondheim and Schwartz, Boublil and Schönberg, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Larson, Bach, Handel, Mozart, Chopin, Wagner, Menken, Strauss, Puccini, Gershwin, Bernstein, you name it, it's probably buried in here somewhere. Hell, she's even got that Muppets song, 'Rainbow Connection.' She was kind of a hoarder when it came to music, it's a wonder it all fits in one box."

I look at the uncredited work I had been playing. "Do you know who wrote this one?" I ask, pointing to it. Julie picks it up and looks at it, then points to something in the top right corner that had slipped my notice earlier. Someone has scrawled 'C. Bur.' in cursive there. "Carter Burwell," Julie says. "She would write something like this on all of them that didn't have the composer's name on it already. She'd put their first initial, then an abbreviated version of their last name. C. Bur. stood for Carter Burwell." She puts the sheet music back into the box with the rest. "So," she says, "any preferences on who you wanna play next?"

"You said Puccini's in there, right?" Raelyn asks. Julie rolls her eyes. "Sweetheart, _everybody _is in here," she says. "Which song do you want?" Raelyn glances at me, then tugs at one of her sleeves. "Well," she says, eyes moving to her shoes as she suddenly becomes fascinated with them, "we used to play Musetta's Waltz a lot." Julie turns and starts digging through the box. It takes her about five minutes to find what she's looking for. She places it on the music stand and tells us to go nuts. "Give me a minute," I say.

I glance over the information at the top; Musetta's Waltz, and under that, in fancy script, La Boheme. Giacomo Puccini, 1858-1924. Beside the treble clef, 3/4. Mezzo piano. Starting with the fourth finger. C, B, B, A, A, A, B, C, B, A, C, F, F, F, F, C, A, B, A, C, B, C, C, C, F, C, A, C, F, G. Dotted half-note, half-note, quarter note, dotted half, eighth, eighth, eighth, eighth, quarter, quarter, eighth, eighth, eighth, eighth, quarter, quarter, eighth, eighth, eighth. Alphabetically speaking, it looks like a lot more notes than it actually is. This is because most of them are on eighth notes; there would be a C note on one end of an eighth, and then the other end would be an F. Those eighth notes are jumping around the scale. I am oddly comfortable with this. It does not intimidate me at all. I nod. "Okay," I say. "I'm ready. Let's do this."

Raelyn and I place our hands on the keyboard. I ignore the bass clef part and fix my eyes solely on the treble. Julie counts; "One...two...One, two, three—"

C. B. B, A, A. A, B, C, B, A. The tune that fills the room is a beautiful one, and my fingers seem to know it by instinct. Julie stands on the other side of the keyboard, watching our fingers dance across the keys with a smile on her face, turning the page when the time comes so that neither of us will have to take our hands off the keys and the music won't have to stop or pause. Even when I close my eyes halfway down one page, my fingers continue to move smoothly without faltering once, and the tune remains just as beautiful as ever. I open my eyes, and find that I had kept playing the right notes the entire time. I am all but floored with shock at my own ability. I look at Raelyn from the corner of my eye.

She is not looking at the sheet music at all. Instead, she has her head bent down so that she can watch her slender fingers go flying across the keys. She has a smile on her face, and it is completely different from any other smile I have seen on her so far. I can't really explain it. Something about it is just...not the same as the other times she's smiled during her time with us. Her face seems to be glowing with an emotion that is undoubtedly one of happiness, but the word joy seems too weak of a description. It seems closer to exuberance, elation, euphoria, or perhaps even ecstacy.

And seeing her like this makes me realize that sitting here and playing this song, playing this instrument, brings me an indescribable joy, as well. And then I realize that Julie was right; I am a musician.

* * *

**AN: I chose piano because I understand it better than other instruments, which is because I took lessons for a few years, then quit, but I still play a little and can still read music. OH, btw, anyone who can identify the RENT reference in this will officially be one of my favorite people. :) And no, I don't mean the part where Julie mentions the name Larson. (As in Jonathon Larson, for those who don't know, the man who wrote and composed RENT, then died the day before the show opened on Broadway because of a brain rupture or something along those lines caused by his Ehlers-Danlos Syndrom (EDS), which is a connective tissue disorder that I also happen to have and, if not caught while young, can cause problems later in life, sometimes even death, as was the case for Larson. May he rest in peace.)**

**Anyway, I am sorry that it took longer than usual to get this chapter up, but I came home from school sick on Thursday, so I haven't really been feeling up being on the computer much. But I'm feeling better now. Not totally better, but enough that I'm back into computer mode, lol. OMG, guess what?! I'm getting to go see _Catch Me If You Can _on stage next Friday, how awesome is that?! I found this BEAUTIFUL dress at Kohl's yesterday, and my mom and I are gonna go find some shoes to go with it today! The top is like this sheer black material, and then the main part of it is green lace, and it came with a green slip to go under it. Oh my god, it's beautiful, and the colors also make it perfect for when I go see Wicked in April! **

**(Wicked, for those who don't know, is my life's obsession. I've written more things for the Wicked fandom than any other fandom, and my entire life is pretty much eat, breathe, sleep nothing but Wicked, Wicked, and MORE WICKED. Ask me anything about any Wizard of Oz character, and then get ready for a long-winded monologue of an explanation, seriously. Go ahead, ask me anything. This will be the third time I've seen the show, and I've read all four of the books in the Wicked Years series. Damn, I'm digressing again, aren't I? XD WORTH IT FOR WICKED.)**

**UGH. Okay, so that's about it for now. I guess I'll shut up now and leave you alone while I get working on the next chapter!...Just as soon as I figure out where to go next, lol! XD**

**—Maggie**


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Hey, guys, sorry about the wait on it, I just kinda got stuck and lost my inspiration for awhile, but I just went to go see the movie for the second time last night, so that got me going again, and I wanted to post this for you before I left last night, but I didn't have time, so I'm posting it now! I hope you enjoy this chapter, and I'm working on the next shot for Post-Exhumation, if you're reading that. I'm having trouble figuring out a good way to start it, but I'm trying to figure it out. **

**Love and hugs!  
Maggie**

**Disclaimer: Warm Bodies doesn't belong to me, but Raelyn Jardine and her cousins definitely do!**

* * *

"It's not him."

Julie and I both look up. "Who do what now?" I ask. Raelyn comes across the threshold into the room. "It's not him," she says again, crossing her arms and falling into a chair. "That guy that you found, Flynn Sutton? Not the same one I know, or rather, that I knew once-upon-a-time. I just got back from the med tents, I went to go look at him so I'd know once and for all if it's the same guy, and it's not. The Flynn I knew had more...angular features. They weren't really what you'd call sharp, exactly, just...angular. Besides, my Flynn had black hair that was kinda shaggy. This guy's more of a mousy brunette, and his hair's shorter. It's not the same Flynn. And I'm sorry about how I acted the other day, R, I was just kind of stressed out, you know? It just built up and came out before I could stop it, and I shouldn't have taken it out on you like that, and I'm sorry."

I make a vague waving motion with my hand. "It's fine," I say, "it could happen to anybody, I understand." Julie, who has been leaning against my side watching TV while I read Harry Potter, sits up and stretches. "So what're you gonna do now that you know you've still got cousins out there, Raelyn?" she asks. Raelyn fiddles with her necklace for a moment. I now know that it's not really a regular necklace, but a locket. Silver, oval shaped with swirly floral designs on the front with a pale gold treble clef on it. And I have also learned more about her purplish earrings from hearing something she told Nora about them after Nora told her she liked them. They are what Raelyn (as well as Nora and Julie) refer to as "purple nebula galaxy posts," which made much more sense to me after I saw them up close and got a good look at them; they look as if somebody went up in a rocket ship with a jar and trapped stars and colorful nebula dust in it like you might trap fireflies on a summer evening, then came back, took everything out of the jar, put it into two little orbs, then made them into the earrings that Raelyn wears.

"I think," she says finally, thoughtfully, as if choosing her words carefully, "that I'm going to head there to be with them."  
"Where exactly are they, anyway?" I ask. "I don't think anyone told me, and I've been wondering."

"They're over in Everett," Raelyn tells me. "It's twenty-five miles north of Seattle, in Snohomish County."  
_"Twenty-five miles?" _Julie echoes in disbelief, eyebrows shooting up. "Seattle itself is thirty-two miles away, that's..." She pauses and counts on her fingers. "Oh my God, Raelyn, that's a fifty-seven mile drive from here! You can't make that trip alone, it's too dangerous with as many Dead as there are still out there, especially ones who might be potentially violent!"  
"Not to mention Boneys," I add. "I mean, the chance of that is _way _lower than that of any Dead, especially after we wiped out most of 'em at the airport, but still."

"R's right," Julie says. "There are still lots of uncured Dead out there, ones who haven't even begun the curing process, and like he said, even though there's a much smaller chance than ever before of encountering a Boney, the fact remains that there is still a chance of it, and combined with the higher chance of running into as-of-yet unaffected Dead, making a fifty-seven mile trip alone is just way too risky, no matter who's making it. You are _not _going by yourself, Raelyn, we won't let you, alright? Somebody's gotta go with you. It doesn't matter who, but you need to take _someone,_ preferrably two someones, that way nobody will be going or coming back alone."

"I realize that," Raelyn says, "and I've been thinking about it, actually. And since it just so happens that we used to live in Everett, I started to think that maybe, if R goes back one more time, it might, just maybe, if we get lucky, you know...trigger some memories for him. So, I was wondering if maybe the two of you would go with me."

There are several beats of silence. Julie and I look at each other, a silent conversation passing between us for a few moments until we reach an unspoken agreement. Julie turns to Raelyn and nods. "Alright," she says. "We'll do it, we'll take you to Everett." Raelyn's shoulders seem to drop slightly, and I realize she must have been holding her breath while Julie and I "spoke" to each other. Raelyn smiles. "Great," she says. "Thanks so much, you guys, it really means a lot to me that you'd do this. I'll go call Atalanta and Colin and let them know we're coming. But I'm not going to mention you, R. Let's have some fun with that and make it a surprise, just because we can."

She gets up and heads off to find the phone. Atalanta and Colin. Are those the names of Raelyn's cousins? My cousins, too, I suppose, since Raelyn is my sister. I'm having a harder and harder time doubting that she is with each day that passes. We just look and act too much alike to not be related. I look at Julie, and she looks back at me. "So I guess we're driving fifty-seven miles to Everett," I say. Julie nods. "Looks like it," she replies. "And believe me, fifty-seven miles is a _long _way to drive, and with the condition most roads are in right now, I don't think Mercey's cut out for making this trip, so we're probably gonna wanna borrow one of the SUVs or pickups or something from Rosy and his guys."

Raelyn comes back into the room. "Alright," she says, "it's all set. We leave for Everett tomorrow morning, and it'll take about a day or two to get there with everything's current condition, so you'll both wanna pack at least two day's worth of clothes, maybe three just to be safe. Sound good to everyone?"  
"Yeah, sounds fine," Julie says. Raelyn grins. "Great. Then let's start packing, shall we?"

* * *

**AN: The reason I chose Everett is because in the novella, Julie shouts to Nora that they're going to "South Cascadia," and after some poking around, I found out that "Cascadia" isn't a city, but a region. It's the Pacific Northwest, up by the Cascade Mountains, and conisists of part of Canada, Washington state, Oregon, Idaho, and I think also part of Wyoming. So, since I already knew that they weren't in Seattle because that was the city they had just driven out of when this happened in the novella, I did a little more poking to find out the names of other cities in the Puget Sound area, and found out about Everett. For those wondering, I decided that they are in Tacoma, which is thirty-two miles southwest of Seattle. That plus the twenty-five miles it takes to get from Seattle to Everett makes fifty-seven.**

**And for anyone wondering about last night, the movie was even better the second time! n_n**

**Love,  
Maggie**


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Okay, so for this one, I _literally_ went online and Googled what kind of guns they used in the movie, because I do not have the first effing clue about guns and things like that, so I had no fracking idea what those were, and even though Julie's dad does, at one point, say the name of one, I couldn't remember what it was despite having seen it for the second time last night, all I remembered was that the first letter was an R (oh, the irony! XD), but that was it. The one that Raelyn gets is the same one that General Grigio used to shoot R in the shoulder at the end of the movie, believe it or not. O.O**

**Anyway, hope you like this one, I finished writing it while watching the Oscars, and I'm about to start the next one while still watching the Oscars. I'M ROOTING FOR LES MIS, WHO'S WITH ME?!**

* * *

When I head downstairs the next day, both girls are already up. Julie is wearing a light grey tank top under an olive green hoodie and vintage army green jacket with solid black tights and a denim skirt with her brown combat boots, a belt the same faded brown as the boots, and black leather fingerless biker style gloves, her blonde hair pulled away from her face in a ponytail and her 'Embrace Change' Pyrrha talisman around her neck. She looks beautiful all geared up and ready to go like this, but then again, when doesn't she look beautiful? Raelyn, who has been borrowing clothes from Julie during her time with us, is back in her own clothes now, the jersey dress and leggings with the Converse and headband, the leather rucksack slung over her shoulder.

I think I have less on than either girl with my dark grey t-shirt, a pair of jeans, classic solid-except-for-the-logo black Converse, and a Pyrrha talisman with a pheonix on it that Julie found in a cardboard box full of trinkets and jewelry and things over at the place where clothing donations go. She found it on the same day she found her own Pyrrha, and she picked them out for us because of the meaning of the images on them. A pheonix for me because of the association with new beginnings and starting over, and a diamond shield with four half-moons on it for herself because something about it is apparantly symbolic of welcoming and embracing changes in life.

"Let's go!" Raelyn says eagerly when I tell them that I'm ready when they are. Before we walk out the front door, Julie heads into the study and re-emerges with the Ruger SR9 tucked into a holster she's attached to her belt. She hands Raelyn and I the other two holsters she's carrying, tells us to put them on, then hands me the Beretta 92FS that Nora is usually in possesion of when she comes with us on this sort of thing, and gives the other handgun she's carrying, her dad's Stainless Taurus PT92AFS, to Raelyn. "Just in case," she says. "Uncured Dead are still around, and like R said, there's still an off-chance of coming across a Boney. If that does happen, we need to be prepared. Let's go."

* * *

"Is it a mineral?"  
"Sort of, I guess."  
"Is it...some kind of gem?"  
"Kind of."  
"Is it...a famous one?"  
"Insanely so, yeah."  
"Is it...cut, or uncut?"  
"Uncut, very much in the rough."

"R, how many questions has that been so far?"  
"Only four, you've still got plenty left, babe."

Julie sighs. We have been playing 20 Questions for the past half hour or so, and right now it is Raelyn's turn. "Okay," Julie says, "is it...the Hope Diamond?" Raelyn makes a negative buzzer noise, and in the rearview mirror, I see her point both thumbs downward. "Think on the opposite end of the color spectrum," she says. "Besides, the Hope Diamond isn't in the rough, it's cut!" Julie scrunches up her brow in thought for a few minutes. "Okay...rough...famous...red..."  
"Julie, please!" I say. "It's so obvious when you put it that way!"

"Oh, really?" she says. "Well then, if you're so smart, why don't you tell us what it is, Mr. Braniac?" I roll my eyes and laugh. "It's the Sorcerer's Stone, duh," I say matter-of-factly. Raelyn lets out a cry in the backseat. "Yes!" she says. "Yes, yes, yes! Omigawd, R, yes, that's it, you got it!" I cross my arms and lean back in my seat, putting my feet up on the dash and shooting a sideways smirk at Julie. "Can't believe you didn't figure that one out, Jules," I say. She just rolls her eyes and hits me on the shoulder. "Yeah, yeah," she says, "I get it, I'm dumb."  
"Hey now, I never said that!" I protest, sitting back up. "Julie, I didn't mean it that way. I'm sorry, sweetheart, I love you."

She smiles at me. "I know, R," she says. "I love you too, I was just messing with you." Raelyn leans forward and smiles at us both. "You guys are cute together, you know that?" she says. "You were just _made _for each other, just like Romeo and Juliet."

I blink and sit up straight. "Just like who?" I ask.  
"Romeo and Juliet," Julie says. "Shakespeare, commonly referred to as the greatest love story ever told. It's one of his tragedies, the _original_ original forbidden love. Basically what happens is there's this boy and girl, Romeo Montague and Juliet Capulet, and their families have been fueding for so long that nobody even remembers what started it anymore. Romeo and his friends sneak into a party held at the Capulets' one night, and he and Juliet see each other and fall in love, but they can't be together because of the fued, so they go to a man at the church, Friar Lawrence, and tell him what's going on and ask him to perform a marriage ceremony for them. He thinks that maybe, once the families find out, it will finally put a stop to all the fighting, and he can also see that they love each other and it's what they want, so he does it with Juliet's nurse and Romeo's man Balthasar as the witnesses, and they promise to keep the secret. And, um...basically, Juliet's cousin Tybalt gets killed in a duel, so does Romeo's friend Mercutio, Romeo gets banished from Verona, which is where this all takes place, and Juliet goes to the friar for help, and he gives her a potion, she drinks it and it makes her appear dead, they put her in the family tomb, Romeo is supposed to come and get her so they can leave together, but he gets the wrong message, so he goes to the tomb and drinks some poison, and when she wakes up and sees him dead, she grabs his dagger and stabs herself, and when the friar tells the families the whole story, they feel so awful that they finally make up and even have a gold statue of their kids put up in the town square to honor them."

"Oh my...And being compared to them is a compliment?" I ask. The girls look at each other, then back at me and nod. "Generally, yes," Raelyn says. "A rather big one, in fact." I put my hands out in front of myself, momentarily at a loss for words. "But...they both end up dead!" I manage finally. "How the _hell _is it a good thing to be compared to a couple who both end up _dead?" _Julie chuckles. "Actually, babe, this particular pair us usually referred to as 'star-crossed,' not 'a couple who both end up dead.'" I shoot her a look that demands to know why the hell it even matters what term was used in reference to them when either way, the result is still the same.

She sighs and shakes her head as she puts her eyes back on the road. "It's a good thing," she says, "because the love they shared is undoubtedly one of the purest, sweetest most tender, trusting, beautiful, and truest loves of all time. They loved each other unconditionally and irrevocably and without any limit or restraint. It is a love powerful enough to move the stars and planets, to completely change an entire town for the better, to change the lives of everyone close to them forever, and..."

Realization dawns on her face suddenly and she stops the car, hands falling away from the wheel as she leans back in her seat and closes her eyes, releasing a breath of air as her mouth falls open. "Oh my God," she says quietly. Her hand slowly begins to make its way across the space between us, and her fingers intertwine themselves with mine. She turns to me and opens her eyes, and they are glistening with unshed tears. She grabs my other hand, letting her head fall forward so that her face is against my shoulder. I grasp her hands tightly in my own, worried that something is wrong, but when she looks up again, she is smiling. She has tears on her face, but she is smiling.

"It's our love," she whispers. "It's just like what we have, R. It's the same thing. It's _our _love. And I don't know how this didn't occur to me before, but we even share the same initals! R and Julie, Romeo and Juliet, R and J! It's like...It's like we were meant to find each other from the very beginning, like we were tied to each other before we even knew about each other's existance." She hugs me tightly, and I hug her back, and her scent fills my nostrils. "I already knew that, though," I say in her ear. "From the moment I first saw you, I knew we were destined. I don't need initials to tell me that, Julie."

"Back seat," Raelyn says suddenly. We look at her. "Back seat," she says again, "both of you, now. We need to keep going if we're going to get there in the expected time frame, but this is clearly a major thing for you guys, and you need to have this moment together, and I want it to last for as long as it needs to without interruption, so both of you get into the back seat, and I'll take over driving, okay?" Julie smiles at her. "Thank you," she says. Raelyn nods. "Of course," she replies. And with that, Julie and I crawl into the back seat, and Raelyn crawls up front. And for the next several miles or so, Julie just keeps on managing to find more and more similarities between ourselves and Romeo and Juliet, and with each new discovery she makes, her face and eyes just light up even more, and every time they do, I just keep falling more and more irreversably in love with her.

* * *

**AN: Ok, so lately, I've been INSANELY fixated on the connections between Warm Bodies and Rome & Juliet, and I've been desperately searching for a way to get it into the story for a while now, and I FINALLY FIGURED IT OUT, SO YAY!**

**Oh, and also, I OWN NOTHING AND DENY EVERYTHING! XD**


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: It all started with a picture.**

**I could see it perfectly in my head, every detail crystal clear.**

**The bed, the desk, the piano, everything, right down to the thread count in the sheets and the dust motes floating in the air.**

**It was...**

**R's bedroom.**

**And now, my pretties, I give that picture unto you within this chapter. **

** —Maggie**

**Disclaimer: I do not own the following: Warm Bodies, Strawberry Fields Forever, The Outsiders, Les Misérables, the Green Fairy and the drink she represents. Thank you for your attention and have a nice day.**

* * *

The driveway that Raelyn pulls into belongs to a rather unremarkable house. The white paint on the clapboard sides is faded and peeling, and the shingles on the roof are so sun-bleached and faded that I can't tell whether they're supposed to be gray or dark olive. I don't know what the door looks like, because only the screen door is closed. The porch railing and porch steps have peeling paint on them, and the porch itself also looks pretty worn, as does the bench swing up by the door. The grass is mostly dead, and all the plants are completely dead, or at least close enough that they look it from my current position.

The screen door opens as we are getting out of the car, and a girl comes flying out of the house, her long and lacy white skirt swirling widly around her legs. She has light caramelish colored hair down to the small of her back, and it flies around her face like an insane mist or something. Raelyn drops her rucksack at her feet and goes running to meet the other girl halfway, the two of them throwing their arms around each other, both of them letting out shrieks of joy.

"We thought we'd lost you, Rae!" the brunette cries. "Don't _do_ that to us, God dammit! It's bad enough we lost Rayner, don't make us lose you, too!"  
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you so bad! Oh, God, speaking of Rayner, you're not going to believe this! God, where's Colin at?! COLIN!"

The screen door opens again, and this time, the person who comes out is a boy with a sandy mop of hair with dried paint gluing strands together in a few places and a scar on the bridge of his nose on the right side, part of it near the corner of his eye before it begins a downward slant. His jeans have tons of little holes all over them, as if he spends his free time poking at them with a fork or something, and are covered in marker doodles and paint splatters, and his black tank has a black-and-white image of Heath Ledger as the Joker on it. His face lights up when he sees Raelyn. "Raebee!" he says, then runs to join the hug. After she's finished with her second hello, Raelyn comes back over to Julie and I, grabs my wrist, and drags me across the half-dead lawn, Julie getting pulled along behind me since I'm holding her hand when Raelyn takes hold of me.

When the other pair sees me, their eyes widen and they both gasp, all the color draining from the girl's face as if she's looking a real live ghost right in the eyes. "Lookit what I found hiding out in Tacoma," Raelyn says. "He's been living there with his girlfriend ever since the cure got started. They're actually the reason for it. They fell in love and it started something that spread, and now...We're on our way."

"H-How..." the boy says, shaking his head in wonder. The girl, however, seems to know exactly what she wants to say, and instead of actually saying it, she conveys it by striking my face with her palm. Julie cries out at the same time that I do as my hand flies up instinctively to cover the hurt cheek. "R!" Julie says. "Oh my God, are you okay?! What the _hell _was that for?!"

_"Rayner Aaron Jardine!" _the brunette screeches at me. Her face is turning red, and she is clearly enraged, though I have no clue why. "You _bastard, _we thought you were _dead!"  
_  
"I was!" I say, hand still over my cheek. "I _was _Dead, capital D, I was! But then I found Julie and she started something in me that spread to the others and next thing we know, Corpses are coming back to Life all over the place!...I'm sorry, who are you again?" They look at each other, then back at me. She quirks an eyebrow. "You're kidding, right? Rae, he's kidding, right? Tell me he's kidding." Raelyn, Julie, and I all shake our heads in response to this. "He's not kidding," Raelyn says. "I'm not kidding," I say. "Seriously...who are you?"

"We're your _cousins, _you dumbass! You know, Atalanta and Colin? Colin and Atalanta? Ring any bells? Oh, come _on,_ Rayner, we only saw each other like every single week, don't tell us you forgot!"  
"I...I don't remember anything," I say. "I don't know why, but for some reason, when I was Dead, I completely forgot everything about my old life. I mean, I don't even remember how I died. If I remembered anything, you'd think it would make the most sense for that to be it, but...I've got nothing. My first solid memory is of the first time I saw Julie. I...When I was Dead, memories disappeared in the exact same instant they were made. Since it didn't really matter to us how much time passed, I guess that we had no need to remember anything, so everything just sort of became a blurry haze, and by the time the sun came up and a new day started, we had completely forgotten everything that happened the day before because it just...it didn't matter. None of it did. The first thing that mattered even a little bit was seeing Julie, so I guess for that reason, that was when my brain started to store memories again. I don't know, okay? I can't explain it, it doesn't make any more sense to me than it does to either of you."

The boy, Colin, I guess, holds up a hand. "Hold the phone," he says, "and rewind. You were a _Corpse?_ As in like..." He slouches and sticks his arms out in front of himself, hands hanging limply at the wrists as he lets his head fall forward so that his chin nearly touches the space above the dip in his collarbone and rolls his eyes back in his head until only the bottom edge of his irises are visible. He then begins to moan and make loud grunting noises as he shuffles around the yard, moving at a pace that's about the same as that of a snail in molasses. The brunette, who I suppose would have to be Atalanta, and Raelyn both laugh at the display, but Julie and I both find it entirely unamusing and don't even smirk at his obvious ignorance.

I cross my arms and Julie puts her hands on her hips. "No," I say. "Not at all like that. And if you honestly think that's what the Dead are like, then I feel sorry for you. Because you couldn't be more inaccurate if you tried." Julie reaches into the pocket of her hoodie and pulls out the polaroid she took of me the night we spent in the suburbs. She's started carrying it around with her almost everywhere she goes, partly to show to humans and zombies alike when we go to smaller camps and things to explain the curing process and stuff so that those who are more skeptical can look at it as physical proof that I really did used to be Dead, and partly just because she likes to have my picture with her.

I know without asking or her saying that her purpose for taking it out right now is to show it to Colin for him to see the reality of what the Dead look like. Sure enough, when he comes back over, brow furrowed in curiosity, she hands it to him. "That's R," she says, "when he was Dead. _That's _what they look like; grey skin, cloudy grey film over the eyes that dulls the color of the irises, usually with veins standing out blue against the skin somewhere on the body, several different areas in most cases, and sometimes the lack of circulation also causes various body parts to appear blue, which was the case with his lips. They usually have lots of scars from being attacked and stabbed with knives, and more numerous than the scars are the bullet holes scattered around practically everywhere from being shot at."

She takes the picture from him and puts it back in her pocket. Colin and Atalanta both look up at us. "But...it _was_ deadpan, right? Your face? It was always deadpan?" Colin asks. Julie sputters, then bursts out laughing. "Far from it!" she cries. "He's got what is possibly _the _widest range of facial expressions I have _ever _seen, he did even as a Corpse! In fact, you should've seen his face when my friend Nora and I started talking about putting makeup on him to make him look more alive so we could get him safely through the city, the way he knit his eyebrows up when Nora said the word 'foundation,' and then that crease he got in the space right between his eyes when I said 'blush!'"

"Julie..."  
"I know, I know, sorry!"

"Well, I dunno about the rest of you, but I'm cold!" Colin announces. Atalanta rolls her eyes. "Then maybe you shoudn't have worn a tank, dumbshit!" she says, then waves it off with a vague motion of her hand. "Whatever," she says. "Let's just get inside, it's almost time for lunch anyway. Rayner—"

"R," I say. "It's just R. That's all I could remember of my name when I was Dead, and afterwards, I still couldn't remember, and even though I knew I could give myself any name I wanted, I liked R, and I still do, so whatever my name was before, Rayner or whatever, that's not what it is now. It's just R now, that's it."

She nods. "Alright then," she says, "R. I was going to ask if you wanted to see your room."  
"...My...room?"

"Yeah. The house only has three bedrooms, but you decided you liked the basement more anyway, so that ended up becoming your room. All your stuff is still down there, we haven't touched anything, it's all exactly the same as it was last time you were down there. The piano, the record player, that metal poster thing with the weird green fairy chick on it, or whatever the hell she's supposed to be. It's all still down there exactly where you left it. You wanna see? Uh...Julie, was it? How about you, wanna go check out your boyfriend's stuff? He's got some pretty cool books down there, he was kind of a bibliophiliac, read books thicker than his own bicep. Wanna see?"

Julie and I look at each other. "I think it's a good idea, R," she says. "It might help you learn more about yourself." I think about this for a minute, then decide that she's right. "Good point," I say. Atalanta smiles. "Great!" she says. "Follow me, I'll show you where it's at. Colin, go break out the juice boxes and PB&J, I'll be there in a few. C'mon, c'mon, come _on!"_

* * *

"Take as long as you want. I'll give you some privacy."  
Atalanta closes the door behind herself, leaving Julie and I standing at the top of rustic-looking stairs that lead downwards. As we descend them and the room itself comes into view, the first thing that comes into my mind is that I must have had _really _simple taste when it came to decorating, because this room has a total of one thing on the walls, and that is literally it.

The carpet is beige, the walls are white, and the lone decoration is, just as Atalanta said, a metal poster thing of a green fairy woman on a black background with a green framing pattern and the logo of the absinthe drink in the lower left corner. There is a worn and faded couch against the wall beside the stairs, and what looks like a wooden chest with drawers at the foot of the bed, which is a twin with white sheets and pillowcases, the one exception being the case on the pillow closest to the stairs. This one is a very dark shade of navy, and it has the bleeding strawberry image commonly associated with the Beatles song, "Strawberry Fields Forever." The name of the song is on it in white, with "Strawberry Fields" above the bleeding fruit, and "Forever" beneath it. The blankets are sky blue, and the comforter that lays rumpled at the end of the mattress matches the Strawberry Fields pillowcase.

A bookcase is against the wall opposite the stairs, and a record player sits in a corner nearby. On the wall opposite the bed, there is a rolltop desk, and a few feet away from that rests a small upright piano. In the corner beside the couch is a dresser, and on the nightstand beside the bed is a lamp with a graffiti printed shade. Next to the lamp, there are two books, one insanely thick and one much skinnier. The former is open, and lays face-down on the nightstand, but the latter is closed, and I cannot make out the cover of either one from where I am right now.

As soon as her foot leaves the bottom step, Julie is headed for the chest. She gets down on her knees in front of it and lifts the lid, then her hand flies over her mouth as she gasps. "R!" she says. "All these records, and the folders of sheet music! God, some of these look like they're almost as thick as my arm, you've gotta see this!" But I am hardly paying attention, because I have wandered over to the nightstand and picked up the thicker of the two books. "Looks like I was in the middle of reading Les Misérables when I died," I say. I look at the page that it's open to. "'The Friends of the ABC,'" I read from the top. "'At this time, there existed in Paris blah blah blahbaddy blah blah.'" Julie laughs, then points at the skinnier book. "What's that one?" she asks. I set Les Mis down and pick up the other one. "'The Outsiders.' By S.E. Hinton. Have you ever read it?"

Julie shakes her head. "No," she says, "I don't think I have. Can I see it?" I hand it to her, and she flips it open to a random page. "''He's dead,'" she says, and I know she is reading out loud. "''His mother had a nervous breakdown. They spoiled him rotten. I mean, most parents would be proud of a kid like that—good-lookin' and smart and everything, but they gave in to him all the time. He kept trying to make someone say 'No' and they never did. They never did. That was what he wanted. For somebody to tell him 'No.' To have somebody lay down the law, set the limits, give him something solid to stand on. That's what we all want, really. One time...'—Randy tried to grin, but I could tell he was close to tears—'one time he came drunker than anything. He thought for sure they were going to raise the roof. You know what they did? They—''"

"'They thought it was something _they'd _done,'" I interrupt. "'They thought it was their fault—that they'd failed him and driven him to it or something. They took all the blame and didn't do anything to him. If his old man had belted him—just once, he might still be alive. I don't know why I'm telling you this. I couldn't tell anyone else. My friends—they'd think I was off my rocker or turning soft. Maybe I am. I just know that I'm sick of this whole mess. That kid—your buddy, the one that got burned—he might die?'"

Julie lifts her wide eyes from the book to my face. "R," she says slowly. "That...was perfect. I mean, you literally got everything left in that paragraph word-for-word, look." I take the book from her and scan over the paragraph she points to. She's right. Almost the entire bottom half of it just came out of my mouth exactly as it is printed on the page. "I...I have absolutely no clue how I just did that," I say, totally dumbfounded to say the least. I slowly lower the book and let my eyes wander around the room.

_Laying on the bed in the middle of the night, staring up at the ceiling in the darkness and contemplating the world. Why were we as humans put on this planet? What are we doing here? Is our presence supposed to serve some higher purpose? If so, _what _purpose? Is there even really any point in living? I mean, people die every single day, and nobody ever really knows about it. It doesn't matter how much of a difference anybody makes in the world, because no matter what gets accomplished by whom, in a few hundred, maybe thousand years or so, nobody will even remember who did what. Nobody will remember that Alfred Hitchcock is the reason Hollywood has that infamous girl-getting-stabbed-in-the-shower cliché. Nobody will remember that Benjamin Franklin figured out electricity, or that Thomas Edison took that information and used it to create the lightbulb. Nobody will remember that Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery in America, or that Napolean Bonaparte was an angry little midget with an ego the size of the Atlantic who went power-crazy and tried to take over all of Europe, or that Adolf Hitler killed God-only-knows how many people in those concentration camps, or that John Lennon wrote a song about the world he envisioned where everybody was equal and nobody fought. Nobody will remember anything in the long run. So why does it even matter whether or not we accomplish something huge? Either way, we'll all be forgotten eventually. So why even bother to try?_

"R? R, can you hear me? R!"

I blink. Julie is looking at me, her brow furrowed in concern. "Are you alright?" she asks. "You just kind of...blanked out on me there, you had me worried for a minute. Something wrong?" I blink a few more times, then take in a slow, shaky breath and sit down on the bed. Julie sits down beside me, the creases in her forehead deepening. "I think..." I say slowly, then hesitate. "I think," I say again, "that I just had a...a memory, Julie." Her eyes widen and she gasps. "Really?" she says. "Oh, R, babe, that's great! What was it, something about your family, or...?"

"Kind of depressing, actually," I tell her. "I was laying on this bed, and it was dark, the middle of the night, and I was just staring up at the ceiling wondering why we even bother trying to put ourselves in the history books or get famous when everything we do just eventually gets forgotten in the end, anyway." To my surprise, Julie doesn't react the way I expect her to. Instead, she just smirks and giggles slightly. "Well," she says, "that actually does kind of make sense. I mean, you _do _tend to have lots of deep, philosphical type thoughts, don't you? Even when you were Dead, you had stuff like that going through your head all the time, right? You're one of those people that's just, for whatever reason, really sensitive to the human condition and can't help but ponder the meaning of our very existance. That's why it's dangerous to leave you alone and unoccupied for too long, because unless your brain is kept busy with other things, it starts thinking all those depressing type thoughts, and then you get all sulky and depressed, and that's never a good thing, now, is it?"

I stare at her for a moment, then she laughs. "Come on," she says, getting up and pulling me off the bed. "Let's go upstairs with everyone else and get some lunch, I haven't eaten since breakfast and I'm hungry after the long drive up here. Burgers, R. Now _there's _a good thing to ponder. Burgers and hot dogs and chicken nuggets and fries with plenty of soda to wash it all down, contemplate that!" I can't help but laugh as I follow her up the stairs.

Oh, _God, _how I love this woman.

* * *

**AN: I'll post a link to the picture of R's "metal poster thing" with the Green Fairy on it, and that'll be on my profile for anyone who wants to see it, 'cause the way I described it here doesn't even BEGIN to cover how seriously awesome this thing looks, so I'd suggest checking out that link.**

**Anyway, a word about The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton:**

**We read it in my seventh grade English class, and I fell absolutely in love with it. I have my own copy of it now, as well as the movie, which is almost exactly the same as the book with no "sugar-coating," as my mom would say, or anything added or taken away from the way Ms. Hinton originally wrote the story. Every so often, I will take the book off of its shelf and re-read it. I intend to one day have my children read it and watch the movie, and then I will later do the same thing with my grandchildren. This book never gets old to me. No matter how many times I read it, none of it ever gets old, and it never will, and that is part of why I so adore it. It is a moving, heartwarming story, and I would highly recommend it to anyone. Johnny Cade's last words will always stay with me; "Stay gold, Ponyboy. Stay gold..."**

**This is something we should all do, is stay gold.**

**So stay gold, everybody. Stay gold.**

**Love,  
Maggie**


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: GREETINGS, ALL! First off, I would like to give a huge shout out to Rue Bladesinger for telling ME to "stay gold," I love her FOREVER for that! Second, BIG NEWS from the exciting world of Facebook Roleplay! My OC, Astalebaen "Asta" Tigelaar, cousin of Prince Fiyero Tigelaar (any fellow Wicked fans out there? FIYERO FANGIRLS FOREVER!), is about to become a daddy! His fiance, one of the countless Elphabas running around on there, RP'd by my friend Mandi, just recently went into labor with their first baby, so I've been collecting pictures of Jackson Rathbone with his son Roe to use on Asta's page, because I already use Jay for Asta's appearance. So, yay! Oh, and my Fiyero and Elphaba pages have twins who will be a year old this coming May, so that's also pretty exciting!**

**So, anyway, yeah, I just wanted to share that because Mandi and I have both really been having fun getting ready for this, trying to pick out cute names and stuff, so we're both just pretty excited now that it's finally happening, haha! And in case you couldn't tell, I've been re-reading The Outsiders recently, so I'm still a little in that zone of focus right now with this chapter, which is why Julie gives R a...well...you'll see by the second paragraph. **

**Disclaimer: I have no claim to Warm Bodies, The Outsiders, and/or a much more obscure, but VERY good book that I would HIGHLY reccomend called Revolution, written by Jennifer Donnelly.**

**—Maggie**

* * *

That evening after dinner, I head outside and sit down on the old bench swing on the porch. After about ten minutes, the screen door opens, and I know without even having to look that it's Julie; I recognize the way her shoes sound. She sits down next to me, and I reflexively put my arm around her as she leans against me and rests her head on my shoulder. "Pretty sunset," she says. I smile. "Yeah," I say, "but you're prettier. I know it sounds corny, but it's true."  
"R," Julie says, "I've got something I wanna give you."

She pulls away and reaches into her jacket pocket, pulling out a classically designed stiletto switchblade with a handle that, with its iradescant silvery rainbow of colors, looks as if it's made out of abalone. Then she gently takes hold of my wrist, presses it into my palm, and curls my fingers down over it. "It was my mom's. She started carrying it when things started to get really bad, and it became mine after she died, and now I want you to have it. I think my mom would have really, _really _loved you, R, if she was still alive and had gotten to meet you, and I just...I just get the feeling that she would have wanted me to do this, would have wanted you to have a part of her, or something, so..."

I open my fingers and look at the knife. "...Wow," I say. "I...Wow, Julie, I...I don't know what to say...Thank you, I guess. I mean, that's all I can think of to say, just wow and thank you." Julie smiles and hugs me. "You don't have to say anything, R," she says. "Just having you around is more than enough. I know that sounds corny, but it's true." We both laugh, then our lips have found each other, and I feel Julie slip the knife out of my hand and into my jacket pocket.

We pull apart when we hear footsteps and laughter, then the door opens and everybody else comes out, Colin taking a flying leap off the porch and letting out a whoop as he turns a somersault midair, then manages to stick a perfect landing, which transitions flawlessly into a cartwheel, and he does all of this without ever even pausing to think about his next move or missing a single beat. When he's finished with the cartwheel, he straightens up and turns on his heel to face us, then bows before jogging back over to join us on the porch. Raelyn, by this point, is sitting cross-legged on top of the railing (how is she able to stay on with her legs crossed? Shouldn't she be losing her balance, tipping forward or something? I know I would be if I were to try that), and Atalanta is leaning with her elbows on it. Colin spins around a few times, then falls cross-legged onto the porch in front of mine and Julie's feet.

"Why yes," he says, "I do happen to be an insanely agile and flexible bastard, thank you for asking. I've got some wacky connective tissue disorder, so I'm like all loosey-goosey and shit, man. I can turn myself into a pretzel and everything. Hey, R, check out my hands, dude!" He flops onto his back as he says this, his head landing right next to my feet, and sticks his hands in the air palm-up with his fingers spread out. The tips of his fingers especially are stained with so many different colors in so many different shades that they all blend together and are barely discernable from each other at all. And it's not just colors, either; they've got black on them, too. Julie leans forward, and I can tell from her face that she's fascinated. She takes one of his hands and examines the fingers on it more closely. "Damn, Colin, what the hell'd you do to yourself?" she asks.

Colin laughs as he sits back up. "I'm an artist," he says, taking a paint-coated strand of hair between his fingers and lifting it up from his head, then dropping it again. "The materials I work with stain my fingers. Paint, conte crayons, graphite, charcoal, oil pastels, chalk pastels, you name it, I've probably worked with it at one point or another in the past. In fact, this scar I've got on my nose here? Happened when I was using an Xacto knife to carve some lines into a rubber block to use for a stamp. See, I was bent over what I call my worktable, the space where I do sculptures and stuff like that, and I was really focused and in the zone, and it's totally quiet in the room, and the door's closed, and then all of a sudden, Atalanta comes in and starts to ask me something, and the abruptness of hearing her voice was such a shock and scared me so bad that I yelped and threw my hands up like this as I straightened out, and the knife went flying out of my hand, and when it came back down, the blade got me. It wasn't as deep as some of the other Xacto related injuries you hear about, thank God, but it was deep enough to nessecitate stiches for a while and leave a scar once I got 'em out. Doc said if it had been any closer to my eye, I might've ended up half-blind." He starts to laugh and shakes his head. "It was like five years ago, and I still haven't let her hear the end of how it was her fault!" he says.

"Sad, but true," Atalanta adds with a sigh. Colin suddenly reaches for my jacket pocket. "Whatchya got in there, buddy?" he asks. Before I can fully register what's happening, he's already dipped his hand into my pocket and pulled out the switchblade, then scrambled to the other end of the porch and onto the railing, where he perches while he studies the knife. Next thing I know, he's flicked the switch, and the blade itself is out. He turns it over in his hands and studies it. "Damn, cuz," he says. "What the hell are you doing with a thing like this? And where'd you get such a beauty? They don't make 'em with this nice lookin' kinda handle anymore."

"Julie gave it to me," I say as I get up and take it out of his hands. "It was her mother's, and I would appreciate it if you didn't randomly reach into my pockets and take out whatever you find in them." I sit back down next to Julie and fold the blade back into the handle. Before I can put it back in my pocket, though, Atalanta has snatched it out of my hand, then passed it to Raelyn. She looks at it, opens it back up. Her eyes move up to rest on Julie's face. "You gave my brother a knife?" she asks slowly. Julie nods, shrugs slightly. "Just in case," she says, "for self-defense and stuff, that's all."  
"You gave. My brother. A _knife?" _Raelyn says again.  
"I don't understand why that's a big deal."

"It's a _big deal _because when we were five, he got hold of a kitchen knife and wedged it into a wall so deeply that Dad had to use pliers to get it out. It's a _big deal _because when we were thirteen, he found Dad's pocket knife and used it to cut off fistfulls of Sherwood's fur and left the poor dog with bald spots in multiple places. It's a _big deal _because when we were sixteen, he nearly cut his own finger off when he was slicing tomatoes to put on burgers for a barbeque. It's a _big deal _because he has a scar on his thigh from when he dropped a _cleaver like the ones used in butcher shops. _Do you understand what I am saying here, Julie? He _cannot _be trusted with knives of any kind, nor should he under _any _circumstances whatsoever. I get that you want him to be able to defend himself if he needs to, but giving him a knife is _the _worst way you could possibly give him that ability."

I am not really paying much attention by this point, because my face is still screwed up in confusion over the part about the thigh scar and cleaver. "Where the hell did I even get my hands on a cleaver to begin with?" I ask, but nobody seems to hear me, or if they do, they ignore me. Raelyn launches into this long-winded monologue or something about why it's a terrible idea to put a blade in my hand, how stupid Julie is for even considering the idea of giving me one, and so on and so forth, and poor Julie can hardly even get a syllable out, so I finally decide to just take things into my own hands.

"Enough!" I say, standing up and grabbing the blade from Raelyn. Again, I fold it back into the handle. "I'm...how old was it you said? Twenty years old? Twenty-one? I think I'm plenty old enough to decide for myself whether or not to carry something like this. I can decide for myself whether or not I can handle having something like this in my possession. And if Julie wants me to have it, then I don't care what anyone else says, because to be totally honest, the only opinion that really matters to me is hers, and if she's okay with it, then that's all I need to know. Seriously, everbody quit stealing it from me, alright? From now on, nobody touches it but Julie unless they pick it up and tell me, or I hand it to them myself. Seriously, Raelyn, if Johnny effing Cade can deal with one of these things, then I'm pretty sure I can, too."

"Sorry, Johnny who now?" Julie asks as I slip the switchblade back into my pocket. "Cade," I say. "Kid in that book that was on the nightstand, the one that got burned and, quote unquote, 'might die.' He was scared of his own shadow, but he carried a switch with a blade that was like...eight inches, wasn't it? That _sounds _right, but I'm not—" Julie cuts me off by suddenly latching onto my arm, then letting go again and bouncing a little in her seat. "R, baby, you're doing it again!" she cries. "You're remembering, omigawd! Ok, ok, um...tell me something else about the book."  
"Like what?" I ask.

"I don't know! Anything! Like, um, tell me...Oh, I know! Tell me how Johnny got burned."  
"He and Ponyboy went into a burning church to save some little kids that were trapped in there and the roof started to collapse, so Johnny shoved Pony out the window, and one of the beams fell on him before he could get himself out. He ended up with a bunch of third degree burns and it broke part of his back, so even if he had lived, he never would have been able to walk again. He couldn't even feel any of the injuries that were below his waist."

"Okay, now tell me who Ponyboy is."  
"Ponyboy Curtis is the main character, the book is told from his point of view. He has two older brothers, Darrel, who they call Darry, and Sodapop. Ponyboy and Sodapop are actually the names on their birth certificates, it was their dad's doing. Soda used to have a horse named Mickey Mouse that he didn't actually own, but it was still his horse, and it broke his heart when that horse got sold. Pony says that Soda's like a...what was it again? Oh yeah. Pony said Soda was 'like a long-legged palamino pony that always had to stick his nose into everything.' And...there was a girl...redhead...green eyes...What was her name again?...Ch...Charmaine? No...And...it wasn't Chelsea...Cherry! That was it! Cherry Valence! _Damn, _that girl seriously hated Dally's guts! Or—No, that wasn't Marcia, it was definitely Cherry. 'Cause Cherry was the one that threw the Coke Dally brought her in his face, Marcia actually drank hers. Yeah, no, it was Cherry who was the badass with a sensitive side, as opposed to Dally, who was just a plain ol' badass, and Pony, who was the sensitive one with a badass exterior."

Raelyn suddenly leaps up and runs inside, then comes back out a few minutes later with a paperback book in her hands, which she thrusts into my face. "And this one," she says breathlessly. "What can you tell us about this one?" I frown as I take it from her and study the cover, flip through the pages and land on a random one. There is a specific line that my eyes are immediately drawn to.

_Oh, dead man, you are dead wrong, I tell him. Can't you see? The world goes on, stupid and brutal, but I..._

I flip some more, this time to the last page, and my eyes go straight to the bottom, and again, there is that line.

_It goes on, this world, stupid and brutal.  
But I do not.  
_I _do not._

"Malherbeau," I say. "Malherbeau, Andi, Truman, a key, Louis-Charles, Alex..." I close my eyes, and after a moment, I feel my eyebrows go up slightly. "And a song about a Crazy Diamond." Visions, pictures, images dance around on the back of my eyelids.

Memories.

"Sitting on the roof of this house," I say, "drinking a beer. Dad's calling me. Underwater somewhere...a river, I think...Wish I never have to come back up again, it's...peaceful under there...quiet and calming. Paint. Paint all over the carpet, pissed off parents...Colin...grounded for a century and a half...and then he snuck out his bedroom window and the cops brought him back totally wasted. Throwing paint balloons at a...I think it's...It looks like a tarp or something. And...then..."

_Guns. Guns of all kinds. Rifles, handguns, BB guns, even bows and arrows, crossbows and bolts. Big bullets, little bullets, pellet bullets, just bullets, bullets, bullets, all kinds of bullets everywhere you look. Bullets in tree trunks, bullets in walls, bullets in the ground, bullets in bushes, bullets tearing flowers in half, bullets in that guy's chest, bullets in that girl's head. And dead people. All. Over. The place. Yup. They're all dead. You're dead, that girl's dead, that guy in the alley is _really _dead. Everybody's dead. Dead, dead, dead, dead as doornails and dishtowels and dumbells. Dead, dead, dead. Mom's dead, Dad's dead, Aunt Cait's dead, Uncle David's dead. Sherwood might be dead too, but I have no clue since he ran off months ago. And now, here I am, on some insane suicide mission with a bunch of other seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty-ish year old guys, and yeah, we're all probably dumb as rocks, dirt, and cow patties for doing this, but what the hell ever. It's not like we have much choice, what with the way the world is right now. Wait. What...OH, HOLY SHI—_

"R!"

I blink and snap out of it, finding Julie staring at me with wide, concerned eyes. "Sweetheart..." she says quietly. "My God, you're whiter than a ghost." I manage to gasp out the breath that's trapped in my chest. "I almost saw it," I whisper. Julie shakes her head. "Almost saw what? R, what happened, what did you see?"  
"My death," I tell her. "I almost saw it."

"...Are you sure?"  
"Almost positive."

I look at Raelyn. "We were all idiots, weren't we?" I say. "Me and all those other guys that went on that...recon mission or whatever it was. We were all just a bunch of stupid kids, we didn't have the first clue about what the hell we were even doing, did we? Somebody just gave us a bunch of guns and said, 'Go shoot some shit,' huh? No...training, no instructions, no nothing, just...take a gun and go and try not to get yourself killed. God. Cameron and Trevor and...all of them. Really, all of them?"  
"Every single one, including you. Even the one survivor."

I sigh and close my eyes, covering my face with my hands. "This is...overwhelming," I say. I raise my head and look around at...everything; the dead lawn, the faded and peeling paint, the sun-bleached asphalt of the road, the surrounding houses, the orange tabby walking along the porch railing across the street, the brindle Boxer stretched out in the grass in front of that same porch. And suddenly, it all just starts coming back to me in torrents of sounds, colors, images, just absolutely _everything. _

I gasp. Over and over again, I gasp. My chest suddenly feels too tight, and it's as if I'm not getting enough oxygen into my lungs. My heart's racing, pounding in my chest. I shake my head. "I've gotta..." I feel claustrophobic. Why do I feel claustrophobic? Where did that come from? Dear God. With hardly a thought about it, I vault off the bench swing and over the porch railing, ignoring the sound of everyone calling after me as I take off running down the street.

I am ashamed to say that I even ignore Julie.

* * *

**AN: OKAY, so anyone who catches the Pink Floyd ref in here gets a ton of points, so Pink Floyd fans, GO, THE RACE IS ON! Also, there's a new movie ref in here. In the movie's context, it's at like the very beginning when he's wandering around the airport looking at other Corpses and thinking about how they're all Dead and stuff. FIND IT, GO.**

**And, lastly, I, like Colin, have, as he calls it, "some wacky connective tissue disorder." Mine is called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I haven't decided for sure if that's what Colin has, too, or if his is another one similar to EDS called Mafan's Syndrome. I used to turn myself into a pretzel ALL THE TIME, but I haven't tried since I had my corrective scoliosis surgery, 'cause I don't know what it might do to my back. XD**

**—Maggie**


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: THERE IS A WICKED REFERENCE IN HERE, FOUR WORDS OUT OF "FOR GOOD," ANYBODY AND EVERYBODY WHO FINDS IT EARNS AN INFINITE AMOUNT OF POINTS IN MY BOOK AND CHAPTER DEDICATIONS AND MY ETERNAL LOVE, SO LOCATE IT, THEN TELL ME WHERE IT IS AND WHO SAYS IT.**

**In other news, I created R and Julie in my Sims game using a Nicholas Hoult sim I downloaded from the Exhange for R's base, and ditto a Bella Swan one for Julie, because Teresa Palmer looks like a blonde Kristen Stewart in the face, and the Teresa sim I tried to download didn't make it into my game for some reason, so I just worked with what I had, and I'm very pleased with how she came out. :)**

**Okay, so you know how I'm mixing elements from the book with ones from the movie for this? Well, after seeing the movie for the second time, I got to thinking that I should try to throw in the movie element of Julie's dad being kept alive, and I kept thinking, "Well, how am I going to do that with what I've got so far where it has absolutely no indication whatsoever that he's still around?" And then it hit me:**

**He's NOT around. Not technically, anyway. But he's not dead, either. "But Maggie," you say, "that doesn't make any sense! If he's not dead and he's not 'around,' then where is he?" **

**"Oh, my sweet little pretties," I say in response, "how endearingly naive you are right now!" But then I also say to you, "Do not worry your pretty little heads about it, darlings, for you shall have the answers to all your questions in due time, but only if you place your faith and trust in me."**

**And so, dearies, on that note, I shall let you read, for that is how you will find those answers. :)**

**—Maggie**

* * *

I run.

I don't have the first damn clue where I'm going. I don't even know where the hell I am. All I know is that I have to get away. Away from that house, away from those people claiming to be my family. Just _away. _I don't care where I go, anywhere is better than there. It's too much too soon. I don't know what to do with all this sudden information. I run and run and run and run as fast and as far as my legs will carry me, and I don't throw even a single glance over my shoulder. I run without paying the slightest bit of attention to my surroundings or which direction I'm heading. I just _run,_ God dammit.

I run until I'm out of breath and exhausted and can't take another step, and only then do I stop to take in my surroundings. I've come to a dock or something, and although there are a few boats there, and the typical crates and other things are, of course, all over the place, it's abandoned. I sit down on one of the crates to catch my breath, drawing my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around them, burying my face in the space between my legs and my chest.

"R! R, where are you?! R!"

Even the sound of Julie's voice doesn't make me look up.

"R! Oh, thank God, I thought I'd lost you for a minute!"

I feel her climb up onto the crate to sit beside me, but still, I don't raise my head. Only when I feel her gentle touch, feel her softly rubbing my back with one hand while the other runs through my hair, only then do I finally look up at her. "System overload, I guess, huh?" she says, sounding just the tiniest bit breathless. I only stare at her in response, but the look on my face or in my eyes must be answer enough, because she sighs and wraps her arms around me. In that moment, everything finally just reaches its peak, and my emotions reach their weakest point yet. And in that moment of weakness, I don't know what else to do besides bury my face against my girlfriend's shoulder and let the tears spill over.

Julie doesn't seem to mind at all that I'm getting her jacket wet. She just puts her arms around me and holds me while I cry. "It was my fault," I manage finally. "I remember now, it...it was entirely my fault. I was the oldest in the group, I was supposed to watch out for the others and keep them safe, make sure they got back in one piece, _alive. _And I failed. I couldn't even do that much, I failed them, failed their families...I failed my own family, too. I promised them I would come back, that I would be okay, that everything would be fine, and I didn't, I wasn't, nothing was. I...I went mostly for...revenge, I think it was. Yeah...Yeah, that was it. It was for revenge."

"Revenge for what?" Julie asks. "Do you remember yet, or...?"  
"Believe me, Jules, I _definitely _remember that part," I say. I take a deep breath and let it out slowly.

"I had a girlfriend," I say, "named Nova. Or...that's what everyone called her, anyway. I can't remember for sure if it was her actual name or not. But, anyway, she...was kind of crazy. Not like, mentally unstable sort of crazy, more like...she just did whatever she felt like doing when ever she felt like doing it and never really thought about the consequences or anything. She was one of those people that acted first and thought later, you know? And one day, we were out with Raelyn and Nova's older brother...Geez, what was his name? Brian, wasn't it? That sounds right...No, not Brian, Brendan, that was it. But...we were out, and there was...I don't even know what it was. I remember we called it the Platform, as in like a hunting platform or a birdwatcher's platform, one of those wooden things that they put up in trees, you know? Only ours wasn't in a tree, it was on a...I wanna say a telephone pole, but I can't remember for sure."

I sigh. "Anway...we were up there, and Raelyn, Brendan, and I all had rifles or something along those lines, but Nova, rebel that she was, had armed herself with a bow and some arrows. I remember that she preferred either that, or a crossbow and bolts over a gun because she'd had more training with them than she had with guns, so she felt more comfortable with them, felt like she could pull out the next arrow or bolt faster than she could reload a gun that had run out of bullets, which she could. Besides, she had better aim than anyone else had with those things, and once she got going, she could fire up to about...I think it was something like fifteen arrows a minute, maybe even twenty, I dunno. But that day...she thought she was plenty prepared, we all did, but...turns out she hadn't brought enough arrows. There were more than we thought there would be, so she didn't bring as many arrows as she ended up needing. And after she ran out...She hated being left out of the action, hated feeling like she wasn't helping, so...she took Brendan's knife out of its..."

I start snapping my fingers, trying to think of the word. "Scabbard?" Julie suggests. I nod. "Yeah," I say, "that's it. Scabbard. She took it out of its scabbard, and before any of us realized what was happening, she'd taken a flying leap off the Platform shouting, 'Bonzaaaaai!' at the top of her lungs, and she just started going insane with the knife down there. I tried to go after her, to help, to get her back up, but Raelyn and Brendan held me back, and..." I shake my head. " Nova...she was just too outnumbered and it was hopeless. Brendan killed himself a few weeks later. Put a gun to his temple and bam, that was the end of it. Afterwards, I hated the Corpses more than anything in the world, and I swore that from that point on, it didn't matter what the circumstances were or whether it was coming after me or anyone else, I was going to shoot every single Corspe I ever came across right between the eyes."

"And then you became one," Julie says quietly. I don't speak or meet her eyes; I merely look down and nod. I'm not entirely sure why, but for some reason, I am ashamed of myself. Something about everything I was just able to remember, that I just told Julie. I don't really know why. But I am. Julie and I hold each other more tightly. "Oh, R, honey," she says quietly, "I'm so sorry. I'm so, _so _sorry. I wish there was something I could do to make all of this easier for you." She sighs. "You know what? Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all. Coming here, I mean. Maybe we should've just stayed in Tacoma, let a couple of Rosy's guys bring Raelyn up here. I thought coming here would help you remember, and it has. But I thought remembering would be a good thing for you. Instead, all it's done is brought you pain and stress. I'm so sorry, R, this is all my fault, I was the one who said we should come here in the first place. It's my fault you're in so much pain right now, I'm so sorry. If I realized that this is what it would do to you, I never would've..._God, _I hate myself. I hate myself more than anything for causing you all this pain."

I shake my head. "It's not your fault, Julie," I say. "Agreeing to come makes me a guilty party, too. Don't blame yourself, and please don't hate yourself. I...We're both equally at fault here. There's blame to share. It doesn't belong solely to either one of us. And I'm pretty sure you know that just as well as I do." For several moments, neither one of us speaks; we just sit there on top of that crate at that abandoned dock with our arms around each other, both of us drawing comfort from the other's presence. Then, suddenly, 'Across the Universe' starts playing from inside one of Julie's pockets. She laughs as we pull apart. "Sorry," she says, pulling her cell phone out. "I totally forgot I even had this thing with me." I can't help but smile as I shake my head. "It's fine," I say.

Julie looks at the screen, sighs, and hits the green Accept button, and puts the phone to her ear. "Hey, Dad," she says, and I'm suddenly reminded of General Grigio's current whereabouts. With everything that's been happening since Raelyn's appearance, I had almost completely forgotten about what the General had been doing. For the last several weeks or so, he's been gone from Tacoma, out with a small collection of troops. (Well, it was small compared to what had driven through the suburbs in search of Julie the night we'd spent in that abandoned house together and taken those polaroids of each other.) They've been off in search of smaller groups, camps, cities, etcetera where survivors of the apocolypse might be found, and also keeping an eye out for places where large groups of Dead might be, like the airport where M and I lived with all those other Corpses. He left Rosy in charge of things in Tacoma during his absence, and he calls when he gets the chance to check up on things, make sure everybody's okay, and that Julie, Nora, and I are all still okay, and that we've been doing our part to help with everything.

Normally when he calls, he first calls Rosy, who will then get on another line to call Julie and I to let us know that the General has called him, then Julie and I go to where ever Rosy is. During the time it takes for us to get there, Rosy and Gen. Grigio discuss the military aspects of everything, then once we've gotten there, Rosy puts Julie's dad on speaker so that he can talk to all of us at the same time, and things shift from the military aspects to, well, everything else. This time, though, Rosy must have told him what had happened and where Julie and I are, and consequently, Gen. Grigio had, obviously, decided to call his daughter's cell in order to check up on us.

Julie listens for a moment, a small grin spreading across her face as she rolls her eyes fondly and shakes her head slightly. "Yes, Dad, we're both fine, everything's fine...Yes, I'm with him right now, he's literally sitting right next to me as we speak..._Or, _better yet, I could just put you on speaker and let R tell you about it himself, how's that?...Well, alright then, that's what I'll do...Okay, then, just a minute." She takes the phone away from her ear, hits a button, then holds the phone face-up between us. "Alright, Dad, you're on speaker now," she says.

"Excellent," the General's voice says from the other end of the line. "R, you there?" he asks.  
"Yes, sir," I say. General Grigio and I are still on slightly unstable ground in our relationship, but we're getting there. Just like the world in its recovery, he and I are making slow but steady progress with each other. I'm still rather uncomfortable and sort of stiff and (perhaps a bit overly) formal around him, but it's defnitely a _lot _better than it was before. In the week or so after getting shot in the shoulder especially, I was so tense and stiff-muscled and uncomfortable around him that my shoulders were barely even moving at all because my breathing was so minimal due to the anxeity I felt just from being in the same room as him. So yeah; General Grigio and I have come _quite _the distance together since then, which is a relief not only to me and my lungs, but also to Julie, who wants more than anything for her father to like me and for us to get along.

"Rosso and Nora are both telling me you have a sister," he says to me. I start to nod, then remember he can't see me. "Yes, sir," I say again. "A twin. Apparantly I'm about five minutes older than she is."  
"I see. And you two are in...Everett, was it?" he asks, then we hear a low whistle. "Quite a long way from home, don't you kids think so?" Julie and I look at each other. Something tells me this is one of those times where it's okay to shrug, so I do, and to my slight amusement, Julie shrugs right back at me. "We brought guns with us," Julie says, "and Mom's switch. We didn't end up needing them on the way up, thank God, but either way, we're armed and ready just in case."

"Well, Julie, that's not really the point here. The point is that I wish you'd at least called to tell me what you were doing before you did it. But," he says before Julie can defend either of us, "you are your mother's daughter, and you've always done this sort of thing without telling me, so I guess I really shouldn't be surprised, now, should I? I am concerned about you, though, R, something in your voice sounded a bit...off. Are you sure you're both alright up there? Do I need to take a detour to come get you and take you home?"

"N-No, sir," I say. "Thank you for the offer, but that won't be necessary. It's just...I...It turns out I've got cousins here, and being here, seeing them, the house, the neighborhood, the room that was apparantly mine once, everything, it just..." I sigh and shake my head, though I know he can't see me. Julie gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze, and I give her a small grateful smile before I continue. "I can't say for sure exactly what it was," I say, "but something about it finally triggered my memories, and so many of them started coming back at practically the exact same time, and it just...it's just so much to take in at once, and it's overwhelming me, sir. I..." I laugh lightly. "Julie called it...What was it you said again?"

She grins at me. "He's having a system overload," she says. "But we found a quiet place to be alone, he's gotten some it out of his system by telling me what he's remembering, and he's doing much better now, so we're getting there. I just...I'm really upset with myself, though, because I was the one who said we should come in the first place, so I feel like it's—"  
"It's not your fault, Julie, we've already been over this," I interrupt.

"She's stubborn, R," Gen. Grigio says. "You oughta know that by now."  
"I do, sir," I tell him, unable to stop staring at Julie across the phone. "But I can be stubborn, too," I add, feeling the beginning of a smirkish grin tugging at the corner of my mouth. Julie smiles, and once she does, I'm unable to prevent that grin from fully spreading across my face. Julie is the first one to manage to tear her gaze away, directing it up at the sky. "Uh-oh," she says, eyebrows going up slightly, but her smile never faltering. "'Uh-oh?'" the General says. "What's 'uh-oh?' Julie, are you alright, what's going on?"

"We're fine, Dad, nothing's wrong. It's just the sky, that's all. Looks like a storm's coming, so R and I should probably get indoors before it hits. We'd better get going, so I'm gonna hang up, 'kay?"  
"Alright, then I'll let you go. Listen to me, though, both of you be careful and watch out for each other, you hear me? Got it? R, you especially, understand?"  
"Yes, sir, I understand," I say. "I won't let anything happen to your daughter, I swear. And may I be struck dead if anything does. Uh—Er...well...That...probably wasn't the best choice of words, but you know what I mean."

I can hear him chuckling on the other end of the phone. "Don't worry, I know what you meant," he says. "Well, you two go and start heading for shelter, and I'll talk to you when I can. You'll probably be back home by the next time I call, but just in case you're not, _be careful out there."_

And that, along with an 'I love you' to Julie and a click from the phone, brings the conversation to an end. Julie shoves the phone in her pocket and we look at each other, then up at the sky. Smiles spread across both our faces as we wordlessly take each other's hands, jump down from the crate, and take off running back in the direction we came.

* * *

**AN: That whole backstory literally came to me piece by piece as I was writing it, so... :/**

**ANYWAY, last chapter, adcgreengirl said that, and I quote, "Colin's a total dick, so yeah."**

**So my question for you is this: Does anybody else feel this way?**

**Because I promise you, I did not, in any way, shape, or form intend for him to come across that way when I wrote it, because that's not really how he came across to ME when he was taking shape in my head. The man that appeared to me in my mind was slightly Roger Davis from RENT in that almost immediately, he struck me as one of those people who is basically an overgrown kid and, at least to a certain extent, still sees the world through a child's eyes and, as a result of that, behaves in a way that most people would call immature and, yes, maybe even stupid, although he is actually a very smart person. I didn't intend for him to be, as green put it, "a total dick." I intended for him to be a free-spirited, happy-go-lucky, playful, slightly childish, very creative and talented sort of person.**

**Green, may I ask what it is about him that made you think he's a dick? Because I'm curious, and after reading back over the last chapter several times, I STILL can't find anything that seemed douche-y, so I'm wondering how in the WORLD you managed to get that impression.**

**Thank you very much much for your attentionz and have a nice day. P:**

**—Maggie**


	11. Chapter 11

**AN: WHEEEE, SHORT FILLER! *starts singing* Because I can...Therefore I will...Post a filler...'Cause it's America. And I'm American. And in America, I post what I like.**

Anyone who knows where I took that from gets nine bajillion points and an enormous hug!

**Love and hugs,  
Maggie**

* * *

When Julie and I get back to the house, we pay no attention to everyone else and the questions they throw at us; we do our best to ignore them and head straight for the basement, but something makes me stop. It's not much, just a small flicker in the furthest corner of my mind, but it's enough to make me doubt part of Raelyn's story, enough to make me turn around and walk up to her. She rises from the chair she's sitting in and blinks up at me with wide blue eyes, obviously surprised by my sudden interest in her.

"You said that Mom and Dad are both dead," I say, perhaps a bit more bluntly than I intended to. If that's the case, though, she doesn't seem to notice, because she only nods. "Yes," she says, "they were both gotten by Corpses pretty early on, I told you. What's that got to do with anything, though?" I study her for a moment, then slowly shake my head. "No," I say, "they weren't. They weren't gotten by Corpses or anyone else. They left us here with Aunt Caitlyn and Uncle David, then took off without us and went to...like...Salem, or...Portland or something, didn't they?" Raelyn doesn't speak, doesn't meet my eyes. _"Didn't they?" _I repeat.

"Yes," she says quietly. "They went to Roseburg without us and we never heard from them again."  
"So you lied to me," I say. "You walked into my life out of the blue, looked me right in the eyes, and lied to me."  
"I was just...I was trying to spare you the heartache of the truth, because it tore us both apart, and I just...I'm sorry."

I shake my head. I suddenly can't stand the sight of her, the sight of anything in this house. I can't stand any of it anymore; not Raelyn, not Atalanta, not Colin, and not the city of Everett. I can't even stand to be in Washington anymore. I feel this sudden pull, and I somehow just _know _that it's leading me out of Washington and into Oregon towards my parents. "Julie," I say, turning around to look at her. She stares at me, waiting for me to tell her what I'm thinking, which I gladly do. "Think Nora could get here by tomorrow morning?" I ask. Julie thinks for a moment, then nods. "Knowing her, probably. Why?"

"I want to bring her with us to Roseburg."

* * *

When Nora pulls up in the driveway the next day, Julie and I are waiting for her on the porch steps. We get up and climb into the pickup she's driving without bothering to say anything to Raelyn, Colin, or Atalanta. "Let's get outta here," I say as I put my seatbelt on. Wordlessly, Nora shifts gears and backs out of the driveway, letting the tires screech against the pavement as she takes off down the road.

I do not look back once.

* * *

**AN: I DISCLAIM!**

And apparantly, adcgreengirl, you are NOT alone in thinking that Colin is, quote unquote, "a total dick." Last chapter someone else reviewed saying that they found him, Rae, and Atalanta "a bit overbearing." SOOOOOO that's why I'm sort of using this chapter as a way to cut the three of them out. WHOOPSIES, did I just say that out loud? XD

**Love,  
Maggie**


	12. Chapter 12

**AN: Um, okay, so I had the most terrifying, thrilling, all-around emotional experience I've had in quite a while today. **

**Watching the special features on the DVD, Analeigh Tipton...she's like me. My mom says she even TALKS like I do. I felt like I'd found my long-lost solmate or something, and I just HAD to send her something, so today, I got her fan mail address, typed something up, and I literally JUST got back inside from putting it out to be mailed.**

**It's seven pages long, typed and printed out with my actual signature at the end, signed with my dip pen in my special green ink that I reserve only for very special things, which I considered this to be, and addressed in my equally special blue ink. **

**I was literally sitting in front of my laptop in tears as I wrote this.**

**And I cried again when the printer didn't work and my mom was gone and my brother was telling me to "not get so emotional about it and stop crying." He Who Never Understands These Things. **

**But I just feel like she would write me back! I can't explain it, it's just this gut feeling, you know? And I was crying because...I am so, so, SO scared that she won't. This is only the second time in my entire life I've ever sent a fan letter to anyone, and I'm terrified that I'm getting my hopes up for nothing, and the only way they'll go back down at this point is for me to just sit here and wait for a response that will probably never come.**

**So I basically just wrote a seven page letter to Nora Greene talking about her in the special features of the DVD and rambling on about this and that and crying my eyes out, and the entire time, I could feel my heart flying with hope, but at the exact same time, I was absolutely dying inside because of this sheer terror that I won't get a response that I'm setting my heart on and that I think will come JUST because the impression I got of her in the SPECIAL FEATURES was one that we would be really really super close friends!**

**And I was even scared to go out and put in the mail box, because I'm afraid that if by some INSANE miracle, the people who open her fan mail DO give it to her, which I doubt they ever will, and she actually DOES read it herself, she'll laugh at me because I just ramble on about all these different things, and that she'll think I'm just some pathetic little nobody, which I am, and that I'm not worth taking time out of her busy schedule to write back to, which I'm not!**

**I just don't know what I should feel or think about all this anymore, and so I'm sitting here listening to one of the more depressing songs from the soundtrack online over and over and over again, and...I'm kind of starting to wonder if I did the right thing, or if I should run outside and grab it from the mail box before it's too late...**

***goes and sobs in a dark corner***

* * *

When we drive into the Roseburg city limits a few days later, it's drizzling on us. I'm in the back seat of the cab with my eyes closed, trying to remember something, anything about one, or preferably both of my parents. "Matt and Claire," I say, "that's all I remember, and only because Raelyn told me that day she first showed up in Tacoma."  
"Well," Julie says, pulling into a gas station parking lot, "it's better than nothing. Let's work with it and see what we get."

She parks the truck, and we all get out and head into the gas station. "I'm gonna stock up on snacks while we're here," Nora says, and then she heads off to browse through the candy selection. Julie and I head over to the counter together. The guy behind it doesn't look much older than me. "Can I help you?" he asks, leaning on the counter. "Yeah," Julie says, "we just drove in from Washington to find his parents, we were wondering if maybe you know where we can find them."

He shrugs. "What're their names?" he asks. Julie brushes some hair behind her ear. "Matt and Claire Jardine," she says. The cashier thinks for a few minutes, then shakes his head. "Sorry," he says, "doesn't ring a bell." Julie sighs as we look at each other, then she nods. "Alright, well, thanks anyway. Nora! Come on, we're going!" Nora looks up, drops the package of Redvines she's holding, then hurries after us as we leave the store. "No luck, I take it?" she asks. I nod. "We're gonna try somewhere else," I tell her, climbing into the cab of the truck. Julie sticks the keys in the ignition, and as the engine roars to life, a woman that looks like she's in maybe her early thirties runs up to the driver's side window.

"I'm sorry," she says, "but I couldn't help but overhear what you said in there. You're looking for the Jardines?"  
"Yes," Julie says, leaning out the window, eyes wide. "You know where we can find them?" The woman nods. "They left," she says. Julie, Nora, and I all exchange a look. "I'm sorry," Julie says slowly as she turns back to the woman. "They..._left?" _

"Not long ago. They thought they saw their son on the news shortly after this cure got started, so they went off to see if they could find him and his sister," the woman explains. Julie crawls into the backseat with Nora, and I slide over to the driver's side to lean out the window. _"I'm _their son," I say, putting a hand against my chest. "Or...at least, so I've been told. I have no memory of them, but..."  
"Yes," the woman says, nodding as she studies me. "Yes, I can see it now. You have Claire's eyes and the same hair color as Matt. What's your name?" I shake my head. "I'm told that it was Rayner," I say, "but now I'm just R. It was all I remembered when I was...well...a Corpse. And I like it, so...I decided to keep it. Besides, I don't remember ever being Rayner. R is...it's all I've got. It's my life now. Uh...would you happen to know where they went? Matt and Claire, I mean? Did they happen to say? Tacoma, maybe?"  
"Oh, no, sweetheart, not Tacoma. Lakewood, the city to the southwest of Tacoma. They have a house there, I think."

I twist around to look at the girls. "If we hurry," Nora says, "I bet we can get back home by sunset. We can check in with Rosy, and if we're not too tired, we could probably make it to this other city before midnight, depending on how far it is from Tacoma. I'd have to be driving for this theoretical timing to actually work, of course."

"Thank you," I tell the woman. She smiles. "You're very welcome," she says, "I hope you're able to find your parents. Good luck."

After she's gone, I turn and crawl back over into the passenger seat as Nora climbs up front with me. "Alright, guys, buckle up," she says, doing just that. "I am a crazy bitch with somewhere I need to go, and I'm on a deadline. Psychotic Driver Mode has officially been activated, and I therefore cannot be held liable for any injuries that may be sustained during my time behind this steering wheel, so be prepared for possible boo-boos if you aren't fastened into your seats. Getitgotitgood, now let's get this show on the _road, _bitches, WOO!"

And once again, the SUV takes off with tires screeching on the pavement.

* * *

As the day wears on and the sun makes its way across the sky, we end up taking turns behind the wheel, though it's mostly just split between the girls since I'm still fairly uncertain and nervous with my foot on the gas pedal. I take short turns every now and then, though, because I want to give them both the well-deserved breaks that they've more than earned by agreeing to come with me on what might very well end up being a wild goose chase that, by the time we reach Lakewood will have probably cost us hundreds of miles on the odometer, not to mention all the gas.

We manage to come very close to meeting Nora's theoretical timing. The sun has already set by the time we drive into Tacoma, and the sky is purple-and-blue with the first stars just starting to appear. The moon is a waxing crescent, and it hangs low in the sky, near the place where the dark velvety blue fades into purple, and it looks beautiful and pearly just sitting there, a white smile that's sort of tilted to the side, as if there's someone up there whose face is hidden by the coming night, but is watching us all and smiling at us, giving us that flash of light against the sky's dark evening colors.

We cross the south-western border of the city at about a quarter 'til midnight. It's Nora's turn behind the wheel again, and Julie and I are in the backseat together. She's leaning into me fast asleep, and I've got my arm around her while I lean my head against the window with my forehead pressed against the cool glass. I've been trying to follow Julie's example and fall asleep, but my mind just won't let me. There's too much activity going on inside my head. I can't stop thinking about everything that's happened these last few days. I try not to think about Raelyn and her cousins—I don't want to think of them as being my cousins, for some reason, nor do I want to think of her as being my sister, though I can't really figure out why that is exactly—but with little else to keep my mind occupied, my thoughts eventually wander to them.

I think of Colin, pointing at that scar on his nose with a stained finger and grinning at Julie as he tells her the story of how it got there, his sandy, paint-filled hair falling in his eyes over and over again, how he was constantly brushing it out out of the way, only to have it go right back into place hardly five minutes later. I think of Atalanta with her long hair and skirt, the way she had of dressing that consisted of long, flowing skirts like that and peasant blouses and other things like that, things that generally just fell into that category that wasn't quite artsy, but more...Bohemian, I suppose would be the right word. And lastly, I think of Raelyn.

I think of her eyes—my eyes—and her hair that was almost mine, but not quite short enough; how she's got it cut to her shoulders and in layers, how, even with her headband, she's always brushing it behind her ear, and how it almost always seems to be on the left side that she does this, almost as if she's not doing it to get her hair out of her face so much as she's doing it by force of habit, the way I still tend to shrug in response to questions and things.

There's a CD playing, and I haven't really been paying attention to it very much, partly because it's been turned down to low for me to really hear any of it. But now, Nora turns it up enough for me to be able to make out not only the tune, but the lyrics. I feel as if I've heard it before for some reason, and I think that maybe I had it, or maybe some other version of it, on one of the records in my collection back on the 747. I don't know the name of it, though, or the band. But...there's something about it that I can't really explain. Something that, in my current state, with everything I've been through and all that I'm experiencing, speaks to me emotionally. It strikes me as kind of sad, but it's so beautiful. And that, with the inexplicable way it's speaking to me, makes me fall in love with it before the lyrics have even started.

_So cold, I know you can't believe it.  
Sometimes, you gotta face the feelin'.  
You don't care if you get up again.  
There's a thousand things I will not understand.  
Now you're dealin' with the hell I put you through.  
If I had my way, I would be right there next to you.  
There's certain things in life you cannot change.  
There's certain things._

_I hope you know I care..._

_I've been alone too many nights._  
_Too proud to tell you when you're right._  
_A little patience woulda helped me then._  
_A lot like the break has been the common standard._  
_All the angels above the earth, I prayed,_  
_Said this message right into her head:_  
_There's certain things in life I cannot take._  
_And I will wait._

_I hope you know I care..._  
_I hope you know I care..._

_(I hope you know I care)_  
_So cold, I know you can't believe it._  
_Sometimes, you gotta face the feelin'._  
_You don't care if you get up again._  
_There's a thousand things I will not understand._  
_(I hope you know I care)_  
_Now you're dealin' with the hell I put you through._  
_If I had my way, I would be right there next to you._  
_There's certain things in life you cannot change._  
_There's certain things._

_I hope you know I care..._

* * *

**AN: The song I mentioned from the soundtrack that I'm repeatedly listening to? It's that one. It's called Yamaha, and it's done by Delta Spirit, which is why I've nicknamed this chapter "the Yamaha Chapter." Like R said, it's kinda sad, especially with where they play it in the movie, but for some unfathomable reason, it's my favorite one in the whole movie, so...*shrugs***

**It's the one that starts up right as he runs out of the house they stayed in after waking up from his dream and seeing that Julie's gone. **

**Yeah. **

**That one.**


	13. Chapter 13

**AN: Well, it's shorter than I would have liked for it to be, but I just reached a certain place with it where I said, "This is a good place to end the chapter, LOL!" **

**You'll understand the LOL part when you get to the end, haha! XD**

**Anyway, all of the cities named in here are actual cities in the Puget Sound area (except for Roseburg, which isn't even in Washington, lol)**

**And...also...Nora is becoming _much_ more active in this because of my newfound appreciation for Analeigh Tipton. The girl became one of my biggest role models in a SINGLE NIGHT _just _by sitting there in front of the camera and talking about the things that she was asked questions about for the special features of a DVD. And, again, I sent her a _seven page letter_, in which I absolutely poured my heart and soul out to her.**

**So there you go.**

**Nora has definitely earned it.**

**Sadly, though, my new admiration for her and Analeigh doesn't change the fact that I don't own either one of them, let alone Julie, R, Teresa Palmer, and/or Nicholas Hoult, but GOD, I wish I did own Nicky!**

* * *

I look like absolute shit.

There are circles under my eyes from not being able to fall asleep last night, part of my hair is all crazy from having my head pressed against the window, I can barely feel one side of my face for that same reason, my clothes are all rumpled up from spending the night in the car, I haven't had a clean change of them since before we left for Everett yesterday morning, and I haven't showered since the night before that.

To put it quite simply, I definitely could've gotten off to a better start today.

Of course, Julie and Nora really aren't in much better conditions, either. After all, they're in the exact same situation that I am, so they have just as much right to complain as I do right now. But they're not. Nora is up there in the driver's seat bopping her palms against the steering wheel in tune to the music as she sings along softly, and Julie is right next to me in the backseat finishing the last of the egg-and-cheese-and-bacon biscuit that she got when we went to the drive-through of one of the few McDonald's that are currently functioning in the world, which we were lucky enough to just happen to come across as we were driving through the _much_ smaller town that lay between Tacoma and Lakewood, a place called Fircrest.

We are now inside those city limits, and all of a sudden, I find myself just about scared shitless by the idea of finding my parents. I don't know why, or what brought it on. It just came crashing down on me like a tidal wave when the dilapdated "Welcome to Lakewood" sign came into view. I haven't said anything about it yet because I keep hoping that it will go away, but the farther into town we get, the more I'm beginning to think that I won't be having any such luck. Being as stupid as I sometimes am, I decide that I'm still not going to say anything.

Why should I? We drove from Tacoma to Everett to a city in _Oregon_, back to Tacoma, and then all the way out here to Lakewood _just _for the sole purpose of trying to tie up these loose ends of _my _old life so that _I _can have closure about my past identity, whoever or whatever that may have been. We are out here because of me. And I am not about to make this insane drive have been for nothing. I am not about to announce to these girls who have already been there for me through so much that I've changed my mind and don't want to do this, that I want to turn around and go home, because they have sacrificed an entire day and night of their lives _just _for my sake. I do not want to be _that person. _It goes against nearly every single one of the instincts that I had even when I was a Corpse. It just is not in my nature to do that sort of thing. So I keep my mouth shut.

When we stop for gas and a bathroom break, Nora is able to find out that the house the woman in Roseburg mentioned is right on the outskirts of town. So we get back in the car, this time with Julie behind the wheel, me in the passenger, and Nora stretched out in the back so she can try to get at least a little sleep before we get there, and keep on driving. It takes us a little under thirty minutes to reach the outskirts, then another ten or fifteen to actually find the address given to Nora back at the gas station.

The house looks much like the one in Everett, though perhaps a little bigger and with less peeling paint, dead plant life, and not as much of a sun-bleached look. Other than that and the fact that the walls look like they're made of something along the lines of stucco rather than being clapboard, it looks very much the same as the house that we left Raelyn, Colin, and Atalanta in.

Julie pulls up on the opposite side of the street from it, puts the SUV in neutral, and lets the engine idle before turning around and gently shaking Nora to wake her up and let her know we're there. Once Nora is sitting up and has rubbed the sleep from her eyes, Julie announces that she thinks we should come up with a plan of action so we know how exactly to go about this before we actually go up. Nora leans forward, arm outstretched, and snatches the hashbrown from McDonald's that she had left uneaten so she could have it for later from where it sits on the dashboard. "You want a plan of action, Jules?" she says through her mouthful of hashbrown. "I'll give you a plan of action." She takes a moment to swallow before continuing. "Alright, lovebirds, listen closely, because I'll only say this once, got it? Here's what we're gonna do; I'm gonna jump out and go up there by myself, knock on the door, kind of explain things, and then I'll come get you when the time comes, got it?"

Before Julie or I can say anything, she's tossed the hashbrown back onto the dashboard, gotten out of the car, and is jogging across the street and up the front walk as Julie and I sit there dumbfounded and watch. She knocks on the door, and we can hear the sound of a dog barking from inside the house. After a moment or so, the front door opens, and a large black dog with tan markings immediately jumps up on her, putting its paws on her legs, which Nora responds to by getting down on the dog's eye level once it's back on all fours, scratching and petting it and probably talking to it. She stands back up to shake hands with the woman who's answered the door, and I can imagine them saying something along the lines of, "Oh, I'm so sorry about that," "No, no, it's fine, really!"

While the woman keeps a hold on the dog's collar so it doesn't run off, the dog panting and wagging its tail the entire time, Nora begins talking, and the more she says, the more the woman's smile begins to fade, slowly getting replaced by a look that seems a mixture of shock, disbelief, and possibly something else. Eventually, a man comes up behind the dog, and after another couple minutes or so, Nora is making her way back down the walk and across the street to Julie and I, still sitting in the front seat of the SUV. Julie rolls down her window as Nora reaches us. "Come on," she says simply, then turns and runs back over to the waiting couple with their dog. Julie and I look at each other. She reaches across the space between us, takes my hand, and give it a gentle, reassuring squeeze along with a smile. "Don't worry, R," she says. "Nora and I will be right there with you the entire time. We're there if you need us. We're a team, the three of us and Marcus. We stick together and always have each other's backs, because that's what family is for. And we're a family now, the four of us. Team Exhumation."

I can't help but laugh a little. She gives my hand another squeeze. "You can do this, R. I know you can." I shake my head. "No," I say, "_we _can." She smiles again and nods. "Yeah," she says. "We can."

I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Alright," I say after a moment. "I think I'm ready. Let's go up there and do this."

* * *

**AN: Quick announcement! I don't know if any of you are on Tumblr, but for those that are, I have four blogs on there now, and the links to them can be found on my profile, along with quick one-line descriptions of them, so if you have a Tumblr, follow one of my blogs and send me your URL so I can follow you back and we can be Tumblr buddies, lol! **

**Plus, I JUST made the Warm Bodies blog yesterday, and it doesn't have any followers or anything yet, so I would actually really appreciate it if one of my fellow Tumblr bloggers out there would go and follow that one and maybe even send in the first question (it's an ask blog) to kick things off? Please? Yes, no, maybe? Please? *grabs Adorable Pouty Face R and zooms the camera up really uber close to his adorable pout***

**Pretty pretty pretty please with ice cream and sugar and whipped cream and R and the Winchester brothers and Jace Lightwood and Rob Coddry's jokes and Teresa Palmer's adorable little dog and Magnus Bane and Adam Lambert and David Cook and Misha Collins and a bunny rabbit and Ramin Karmiloo and Aaron Tveit and Samantha Barks and Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor and Darren Criss and Joey Richter and Phoebe Bouffet off of Friends and cake and icing and Jim Carrey and Jack Black and a baby monkey and a puppy and a kitten and cream of wheat and Zuko from ATLA and Leonardo DiCaprio and Matthew Broderick and Timon and Pumbaa singing Hakuna Matata and Kristin Chenoweth and Adam Pascal's bromance with Anthony Rapp and Taye Diggs and Angel Dumott Shcunard in her Santa outfit and Jesse L. Martin's beautiful, deep, rich singing voice and Hadley Fraser and Fra Free and Eddie Redmayne and Russell Crowe and George Blagden and Daniel Huttlestone in all his adorableness and Enjolras and Les Amis' glorious butts and Jenna Marbles singing the "What Are This?" song and Charlie the Unicorn and the Llamas with Hats and the Phantom of the Opera (the man, not the show or the song or even the book) on top?**

***shoves Jared Padalecki the World's Most Adorable and Irresistable Puppy EVER in your faces***


End file.
